Morris Dees

Morris Dees

Dees in 2015
Born Morris Seligman Dees, Jr.
(1936-12-16) December 16, 1936
Shorter, Alabama,[1] United States
Residence Montgomery, Alabama
Occupation Civil and political rights, social justice activist
Religion Unitarian[2]

Morris Seligman Dees, Jr. (born December 16, 1936) is the co-founder and chief trial counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and a former market engineer for book publishing.[3] Along with his law partner, Joseph J. Levin Jr., Dees founded the SPLC in 1971.[4] Dees and his colleagues at the Southern Poverty Law Center have been credited with devising innovative ways to cripple hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.[5]

Early life

Dees was born in 1936 in Shorter, Alabama, the son of Annie Ruth (Frazer) and Morris Seligman Dees, Sr., tenant cotton farmers.[3][6] His family was Baptist.[7] His father was named "Morris Seligman" after a Jewish friend of Dees's grandfather.[8] After graduating magna cum laude from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1960, he returned to Montgomery, Alabama and opened a law office.

Marketing career

He ran a book publishing business, Fuller & Dees Marketing Group. After what Dees described in his autobiography as "a night of soul searching at a snowed-in Cincinnati airport" in 1967, he sold the company in 1969 to Times Mirror, the parent company of the Los Angeles Times. He used the revenue generated by the sale to found the Southern Poverty Law Center in 1971.[9] Dees's former partner Millard Fuller founded Habitat for Humanity International in 1976 and served in executive roles until 2005.

Civil rights legal practice

In his 1991 autobiography[10] Dees wrote that in 1962 he represented Ku Klux Klan member Claude Henley who faced Federal charges for attacking Freedom Riders in an incident documented by a Life magazine photographer. When Dees learned that another lawyer had asked for $15,000 to represent Henley, Dees offered to do the job for $5,000, roughly the median household salary in America at the time. Dees's defense helped Henley earn an acquittal. But Dees said he later experienced an "epiphany" and regretted his defense of Henley.

In 1969, Dees filed suit to integrate the all-white Montgomery YMCA.[11] Dees's new legal firm began taking part in civil rights cases that frequently put him in the spotlight.

Civil lawsuit strategy

Dees was one of the principal architects of an innovative strategy that entailed using civil lawsuits in order to secure a court judgment for monetary damages against an organization for a wrongful act and then using the courts to seize its assets (money, land, buildings, other property) to pay the judgment.

SPLC lawyers used this legal strategy to hold different factions of the Ku Klux Klan accountable for the actions of their members. In 1981, Dees successfully sued the United Klans of America and won a $7 million judgment for the mother of Michael Donald, a black lynching victim in Alabama.[12][13] Payment of the judgment bankrupted the United Klans of America and resulted in its national headquarters being sold to help satisfy the judgment. All funds secured in this manner were paid to the family of the deceased.

A decade later, in 1991, Dees obtained a judgment of $12 million against Tom Metzger's White Aryan Resistance.[12] He was also instrumental in securing a $6.5 million judgment against the Aryan Nations in 2001. Dees's most famous cases have involved landmark damage awards that have driven several prominent neo-Nazi groups into bankruptcy, effectively causing them to disband and re-organize under different names and different leaders.

Criticism

Dees' critics have included the Montgomery Advertiser, which has portrayed his work with the SPLC as self-promotional, contending that Dees exaggerates the threat of hate groups.[5] A 2000 article by Ken Silverstein in Harper's Magazine alleged that Dees kept the SPLC focused on fighting anti-minority groups like the KKK, instead of focusing on issues like homelessness, mostly because of the greater fundraising potential of the former. The article also claimed that the SPLC "spends twice as much on fund-raising--$5.76 million last year--as it does on legal services for victims of civil rights abuses."[14] Stephen Bright, an Atlanta-based civil rights attorney, wrote in 2007 that Dees was "a con man and fraud", who "has taken advantage of naive, well-meaning people–some of moderate or low incomes–who believe his pitches and give to his $175-million operation."[15]

Target of violence

Dees's legal actions against racial nationalist groups have made him a target of criticism from many of these organizations. He has received numerous death threats from these groups, and a number of their web sites make strong accusations against him and the Southern Poverty Law Center.[16] Over 30 people have been jailed in connection with plots to either kill Dees or blow up the center.[17] Most recently a July 29, 2007, letter allegedly came from Hal Turner, a radio talk show host, paid FBI informant and white supremacist, after the SPLC filed a lawsuit against the Imperial Klans of America (IKA) in Meade County, Kentucky.[17] During the IKA trial a former member of the IKA said that the Klan head told him to kill Dees.[18] Morris Dees and William F. McMurry represented the plaintiff in the trial against the IKA in November 2008.[19]

Political activity

Dees started off in politics by working for Southern politician George Wallace in 1958.[20] He served as Senator George McGovern's national finance director in 1972,[21] President Jimmy Carter's national finance director in 1976, and as national finance chairman for Senator Ted Kennedy's 1980 Democratic primary presidential campaign against Carter.[22] Dees ran for the board of the Sierra Club as a protest candidate in 2004, qualifying by petition.[23]

Awards and recognition

In 2006, the law firm of Skadden Arps partnered with the University of Alabama School of Law to create the Morris Dees Justice Award in honor of Dees, an Alabama graduate. The award is given annually to a lawyer who has "devoted his or her career to serving the public interest and pursuing justice, and whose work has brought positive change in the community, state or nation".[24] The American Bar Association awarded Dees the ABA Medal, the association's highest honor, during a meeting of the ABA House of Delegates on August 7, 2012.[25]

Over the last several years, Dees has presented numerous lectures on civil rights and justice at universities.[26][27][28] In 2009, he was the keynote speaker at the graduation ceremony for San Francisco State University.[29]

Media appearances

The story of Dees's campaigns against white supremacist hate groups was dramatized in a 1991 TV movie entitled Line of Fire: The Morris Dees Story.[30]

The Dees 1991 autobiography A Season for Justice was updated in 2003 with new material about his case against the Aryan Nations in Idaho and reissued as A Lawyer's Journey: The Morris Dees Story in a biographical series published by the American Bar Association.

Dees's work was featured on the National Geographic's "Inside American Terror" in 2008.[31]

Bibliography

Footnotes

  1. ↑ "SPLCenter.org: Morris Dees Biography". Southern Poverty Law Center. 2009. Archived from the original on 2009-02-06. Retrieved 2009-05-25.
  2. ↑ Dees 1991, p. 94
  3. 1 2 "Attorney Morris Dees pioneer in using 'damage litigation' to fight hate groups". CNN. September 8, 2000. Archived from the original on 2007-12-23. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
  4. ↑ Dees, Morris, and Steve Fiffer. 1991. A Season For Justice. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 132-133. ISBN 0-684-19189-X
  5. 1 2 Sack, Kevin (12 May 1996). "A Son of Alabama Takes On Americans Who Live to Hate". The New York Times.
  6. ↑ Monroe, Carla R. "Morris Dees | biography - American civil rights lawyer". Britannica.com. Retrieved 2015-08-01.
  7. ↑ "Morris Dees: Biography: Family History and Childhood". Learntoquestion.com. Retrieved 2015-08-01.
  8. ↑ "People's Lawyers: Crusaders for Justice in American History - Diana Klebanow, Franklin L. Jonas". Books.google.ca. Retrieved 2015-08-01.
  9. ↑ Kent, Francis B (December 14, 1975). "Poverty Law Center Scores in South". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2007-05-17.
  10. ↑ Dees, Morris (1991). A Season for Justice: The Life and Times of Civil Rights Lawyer Morris Dees (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, ISBN 978-0-671-77875-0, pp. 84-85
  11. ↑ "Smith v. Young Men's Christian Association". Southern Poverty Law Center. June 11, 1969. Archived from the original on 2007-09-30. Retrieved 2007-09-18.
  12. 1 2 Andrea Stone, "Morris Dees: At the Center of the Racial Storm," USA Today, 3 August 1996, A-7.
  13. ↑ "The Nation Klan Must Pay $7 Million". Los Angeles Times. 13 February 1987. Retrieved 2007-09-18.
  14. ↑ The church of Morris Dees: How the Southern Poverty Law Center profits from intolerance, Ken Silverstein, 'Harper's Magazine, November 2000
  15. ↑ The Southern Poverty Business Model, Ken Silverstein, Harper's Magazine blog, November 2, 2007
  16. ↑ "Group is accused of plotting assassinations, bombings. 2 others will plead guilty Thursday." St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO) (May 13, 1998): pB1.
  17. 1 2 Klass, Kym (17 August 2007). "Southern Poverty Law Center beefs up security". Montgomery Advertiser. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2007-09-18.
  18. ↑ "Former member: Ky. Klan plotted to kill attorney". Associated Press. 13 November 2008. Retrieved 2007-09-18.
  19. ↑ "Jordan Gruver v. Imperial Klans of America". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 18 September 2012.
  20. ↑ Bill Morlin (26 January 1999). "Targeted by hate groups, Dees also has their number". The Spokesman-Review. p. A4.
  21. ↑ Stone, Andrea (1996-08-03). "Morris Dees: At center of the racial storm". USA Today.
  22. ↑ Shogan, Robert (October 28, 1979). "Kennedy to Tell Candidacy Prior to Thanksgiving". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2007-07-17.
  23. ↑ "Morris Dees' Sierra Club candidate statement seeks tolerance". Southern Poverty Law Center. January 22, 2004. Retrieved 2007-05-17.
  24. ↑ Archived August 10, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
  25. ↑ Weiss, Debra Cassens (August 7, 2012). "Civil Rights Activist Morris Dees Receives ABA Medal". ABA Journal Law News Now. American Bar Association. Retrieved 2012-08-14.
  26. ↑ "Morris Dees Speaking". Emporia State University. 2006. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2007-09-18.
  27. ↑ "Civil Rights Legend Morris Dees to Discuss Litigating Against Hate Groups". University of Texas at Austin. March 2007. Retrieved 2009-01-13.
  28. ↑ "Morris Dees to speak on "The Current Status of Hate Groups in the United States"". University of Michigan. March 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-18.
  29. ↑ Zinko, Carolyne (2009-05-23). "Civil rights icons lead S.F. State graduation". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2009-05-25.
  30. ↑ Line of Fire: The Morris Dees Story, 1991, retrieved 2016-10-12
  31. ↑ "Micheal McDonald clip on KKK: Inside American Terror". National Geographic. 2008. Archived from the original on 2008-10-30. Retrieved 2008-11-18.

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