by Ken Kreps
©2000, 2007, 2008 all rights reserved
To read more articles and other works
by author Ken Kreps, visit http://www.kenkreps.com.
To send an e-mail to the author, click here.
Certain actors have also been dubbed as hero's and again, no on-screen or stage role qualifies a person for that title, but off-screen or off-stage activities sometimes do.
There is a man in this country, however, whose name is probably known to less than ten percent of our citizens. He was never a great athlete and there's no record of his possessing any acting abilities even though he does resemble actor Wayne Rogers (Trapper John on M*A*S*H). Never-the-less, this man is, by any definition, a true American hero. He speaks with a powerful voice for those who have no power. He represents those who could find no representation. His name is Morris Dees.
Morris Dees was born in 1936, the son of an Alabama farmer and cotton gin operator. He was named the Star Farmer of Alabama in 1955 by the Alabama Future Farmers of America. He graduated from the University of Alabama and later, from law school. He formed a successful mail order and book publishing company, Fuller and Dees Marketing Group, which he sold to the parent company of the Los Angeles Times in 1969. While all his personal and business activities served to make Morris a good citizen, none qualified him for the label of Hero. That was yet to come.
Morris had always been a compassionate and very unprejudiced man. He had many black friends and sympathized with the Civil Rights Movement but, by 1967, had not participated in it, in any way. One night, while in a snow bound Cincinnati Airport, he did a great deal of soul searching and the conclusions he reached not only changed the course of his life, but eventually changed the lives of thousands of black and white citizens in this country.
In his Autobiography, "A Season For Justice", he wrote "Little had changed in the South. Whites held the power and had no intention of voluntarily sharing it. . . . "I had made up my mind. I would sell the company as soon as possible and specialize in civil rights law," Dees said. "All the things in my life that had brought me to this point, all the pulls and tugs of my conscience, found a singular peace. It did not matter what my neighbors would think, or the judges, the bankers, or even my relatives."
From this decision made on a cold winter's night in 1967 came the Southern Poverty Law Center. Bigots and Racists had enjoyed their own way for well over a hundred years in the South and that was all about to change. Morris Dee's new mission in life was to sue hate groups and other purveyors of racism and to hurt them in the worst possible place.....their wallets!!
In 1969, Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center sued the YMCA in Montgomery, Alabama when it refused to allow two black youths to attend it's summer camp. He uncovered a secret agreement the YMCA had with the city that gave the YMCA control of many recreational events which had previously been sponsored by the city. A U.S. District Court Judge named Frank Johnson ruled this agreement had given the Y a "municipal character" thereby making the Y exempt from the usual civil rights law protection afforded private organizations. The Judge ordered the YMCA to immediately stop all practices of discrimination. Morris Dees had won his first civil rights case with many more to come.
In 1979, over one hundred members of the Invisible Empire Klan group attacked a peaceful civil rights march in Decatur, Alabama. The FBI could not find enough evidence to charge any of the Klansmen, but investigators from the "Klanwatch" arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center uncovered additional evidence which convinced the FBI to re-open the case, with the end result being the conviction, on criminal charges, of nine of the attacking members of the group. Additionally, a civil suit brought against the Invisible Empire Klan was ended with the unique sentence that required the Klansmen to pay damages, perform community service, refrain from white supremacy activities and attend courses on race relations and prejudice. These courses, by the way, were taught by the leaders of the same civil rights group the Klansmen had attacked.
Klanwatch lawsuits in the early 1980s closed Klan paramilitary training sites in Texas and Alabama where Klansmen were taught hand to hand combat, and the use of weapons including grenades and other explosives. The training, according to the Klan, was necessary for the coming "race war".
In the mid 1980's Klanwatch investigators discovered that another Klan paramilitary training center in North Carolina was using military personnel and stolen government weapons to train its recruits. The Southern Poverty Law Center took them to court where the Klan leaders were found guilty on several counts. They went to prison and the training center was closed. Several of this same Klan group's members were later tried and convicted for trying to bomb the Southern Poverty Law Center in retaliation.
In 1988, Morris Dees took on one of the most insidious and despicable racists in the country, Tom Metzger, leader of the White Aryan Resistance (WAR). Metzger sent a top recruiter to Portland, Oregon to organize a Skinhead gang. After completing their training, this same gang murdered an Ethiopian student. When asked about it, Tom Metzger said the Skinheads were only doing their "civic duty."
Morris Dees and The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a civil suit against Metzger as the instigator behind the killing in Portland. They won a 12.5 million dollar judgment and Metzger's hate group was permanently crippled.
The Southern Poverty Law Center also proved to be the death knell for the group known as The United Klans of America. This is the same group who beat Freedom Riders when they helped register black people to vote in the south, murdered civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo in Alabama, and killed four young black girls when they bombed the 16th Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
Alabama black teenager Michael Donald was abducted, beaten and brutally murdered by two United Klans members, who were captured, tried and convicted of the crime. Morris Dees and his group filed a lawsuit against the United Klans on behalf of Michael Donald's mother. They won a judgment of $7,000,000 and effectively put the United Klans of America out of business for good.
There are many more successful strikes for justice which the Southern Poverty Law Center has completed.
* The largest judgment ever awarded against a hate group was the 37.9 million dollar settlement the Southern Poverty Law Center won against the Christian Knights of Ku Klux Klan for conspiracy to burn a black church.
* They also won a one million dollar judgment against a Klan group known as the Invisible Empire. This group attacked an interracial group march in Forsyth County, Georgia. They were forced to pay the million dollars, disband and give their office equipment to the local NAACP.
These are but of a few of the many successful battles the Southern Poverty Law Center has waged. The battle is still going on and only a few weeks ago they won a huge settlement against the Aryan Nations, a racist group with headquarters in Hayden Lake, Idaho. The Aryan Nations are led by infamous hate monger, Richard Butler. Morris Dees and his group have also started turning their attention to militia groups and the overt racism, terror tactics and intimidation some of them use to further their message of anarchy.
It's important to note that the Southern Poverty Law Center bears the total cost, internally, for all investigations and court actions and never charges their clients.
The fight is not over by any means, but those of us who stand for equality, and against hate groups and their message of white supremacy, injustice, and terror, can take pride in the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center and its founder, Morris Dees...A true American Hero.
Ken Kreps lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife. He has written a number of published articles, essays and short stories, as well as numerous consumer and business pieces. Ken has also written scripts for Imagination Theater, an award winning audio drama series heard on over 120 commercial radio stations across the nation, as well as on XM Satellite Radio. He recently completed four short film screenplays. For the past eleven years, Ken has concentrated on acting, studying in the Seattle and Dallas areas, and appearing in independent short, and feature films, television commercials and dramas, and various types of voice-over work.
