From fire-bombings of his office, to targeted by the KKK, to attacked at gunpoint, Morris Dees by all rights should have been a martyr to the Civil Rights cause long ago.
The fact that he isn't, that he continues to be a voice of reason against hatred, gives us all strength. Born to Anne Seligman and Morris Dees, a farmer, in Mount Meigs, Alabama in 1936, Morris Dees spent his childhood focused on farming. He was named the Star Farmer of Alabama in 1955 by the Alabama Future Farmers of America.
Attending the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa as an undergraduate, he made money with a successful cake-delivery service before founding with partner Millard Fuller what became Fuller & Dees Marketing Group. The company became a highly successful nationwide mail order and book-publishing business, which Dees and Fuller sold to Times-Mirror in 1969.
Dees graduated from the University of Alabama Law School in 1960 and returned to Montgomery where he opened a law office, quickly becoming popular and notorious as a man who would take on the cases unfavored by the white community. He credits the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham for opening his eyes to the racial inequities in the South, and became active in Civil Rights marches himself soon afterward.
One of his high-profile cases was the suing of the Montgomery YMCA for racially discriminating against two young black children who were denied entrance to the YMCA summer camp program.
In 1971, Dees, law partner Joseph J. Levin Jr. and civil rights activist Julian Bond founded the Southern Poverty Law Center as a non-profit organization dedicated to seeking justice for civil rights of minorities.
Dees was targeted by the KKK in the 1980's on the same hit list that the radio talk show host Alan Berg, later found brutally murdered, appeared. The offices of the Southern Poverty Law Center were firebombed, and Dees and another person were forced once to take cover after an armed gunman broke into the offices. Dees continues to be targeted by racist and hate groups, who have labeled him everything from a child molester to a hate-monger who stirs up anti-white sentiment.
In 1981, Dees and others at the SPLC created Klanwatch, an organization now monitoring the activities of more than 500 racist and hate groups. In 1994, the organization created the Militia Task Force after uncovering links between racist and anti-government "Patriot" groups. The Task Force monitors 400 militia and anti-governmental groups.
Dees is best known for his 1986 landmark case which tried KKK member "Tiger" Knowles for violation of civil liberties in the murder of Michael Donald. The jury in the case ultimately found for Donald's mother, Beulah Mae Donald, awarding her $7 million and effectively bankrupting the KKK.
In 1990, Dees won a $12.5 million verdict for the family of an Ethiopian murdered by Skinheads in Oregon. In 1998, he obtained a $37.8 million verdict,the largest civil award ever won for damages, against the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan for the burning of the Macedonia Baptist Church in South Carolina.
Dees published his autobiography in 1991, A Season For Justice. He was the subject of 1991 TV movie "Line of Fire," in which he was played by actor Corbin Bernson. Dees was played by Wayne Rogers in the 1996 feature film "Ghosts of Mississippi" about Medgar Evers, slain Civil Rights activist.
Dees continues as chief trial counsel and chair of the executive committee for the Southern Poverty Law Center, as well as heading up the Center's education project called "Teaching Tolerance." He is a highly-sought-after speaker and has written Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat, and Hate on Trial: The Case Against America's Most Dangerous Neo-Nazi.
