Don’t worry: he’s just going to make a speech and leave. Morris Dees, the famous civil rights attorney who co-founded the Southern Poverty Law Center, will deliver an address titled “A Passion for Justice” Monday night at Sangamon Auditorium. But he’s not going to hang around long enough to poke into any racial problems Springfield might have.
Born and raised in Alabama–the heart of the racially segregated South–Dees’ earliest interest was agriculture. Future Farmers of America named him Star Farmer of Alabama in 1955. During his college years, he founded a direct-mail sales and publishing operation, which he later sold to the Times Mirror company.
About the time he turned 30, he decided to devote his energies and his law degree to working for civil rights. Among the many controversial cases he filed were lawsuits to desegregate the all-white Montgomery YMCA and the local newspaper’s wedding pages.
Soon Dees and his law partner established the SPLC, which developed specialties in litigating cases involving civil rights violations, domestic terrorism, and racially motivated hate crimes. As chief trial counsel, Dees has won many courtroom battles, including a $12.5 million verdict for the family of an Ethiopian murdered by skinheads in Oregon and a $37.8 million verdict against the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan for burning a church in South Carolina.
Dees has expanded the role of SPLC to include Teaching Tolerance, a program promoting racial tolerance in schools.
He has won countless honorary degrees and awards, including Trial Lawyer of the Year by Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Award from the National Education Association. He has written three books, seen himself portrayed in two movies, and in 2000 hosted an HBO documentary called HATE.com. He also worked as finance director in political campaigns for George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and Edward Kennedy.
A press release promises that his speech in Springfield will be one of tolerance and hope.
Morris Dees will speak at 7 p.m. this Monday at the Sangamon Auditorium in the Public Affairs Center at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Admission is free. For more information, call 206-6665.
This article appears in Apr 10-16, 2003.
