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The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American non-profit legal, educational, and intelligence-gathering group for the purposes of advocacy for civil rights and against racism. The center is based in Montgomery, Alabama, in the Southern United States. It was founded in 1971 by Morris Dees and Joe Levin as a civil rights law firm. It is known for its tolerance programs, its legal victories against white supremacist groups, and its investigations of alleged hate groups. The Center publishes a quarterly Intelligence Report which lists groups it accuses of political extremism and hate crimes in the United States. The center also sponsored the creation of a Civil Rights Memorial in downtown Montgomery designed by architect Maya Lin. The Center's activities have long generated controversy pertaining to its political tactics, allegations of financial mismanagement by Dees, and allegations of racial discrimination within the organization itself by former employees.
History
The Southern Poverty Law Center was organized by Dees and Levin in 1971 as a law firm to handle anti-discrimination cases in the United States. The organization's first president was Julian Bond, formerly of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Bond served as president of the SPLC until 1979. The first case the Center took on forced the local YMCA to racially integrate their athletic offerings. In 1979 the Center brought its first of its many cases against the Ku Klux Klan. In 1981 the Center began its "Klanwatch" project to monitor and track the activities of the KKK. In 1983, Klansmen were blamed for the fire that burned the Center's office. The SPLC claims that several other attempts to bomb the center and kill Morris Dees have been thwarted.
In 1989 the Center unveiled its Civil Rights Memorial designed by Maya Lin. The Center's "teaching tolerance" project was initiated in 1991, and their "Klanwatch" program has gradually expanded to include other "anti-hate" monitoring projects and a list of reported "hate groups" in the United States.
Educational programs
The SPLC's political initiatives include a project entitled "Teaching Tolerance" based at the website Tolerance.org. According to the SPLC the project is "an educational program to help K-12 teachers foster respect and understanding in the classroom."
"Teaching Tolerance" is a multi-pronged program aimed at two different age groups of students with separate materials for teachers and parents. One portion of the project targets elementary school children, providing informational material on the history of the civil rights movement. The center's material for children include a publication entitled "A fresh look at multicultural 'American English'" that explores the cultural history of common words. A project website designed for elementary school children includes an interactive program that allows users to "explore" political topics such as school mascots with Native American names, the Confederate flag, and popular music and entertainment. It alleges that many of these highlighted events exhibit cases of racial, gender, and sexual orientation insensitivity.
A similar educational program aimed at teenagers in the middle and high school age groups includes a "Mix it Up" project urging readers to participate in various school activities that encourage interaction between different social groups. Other features of the teenager educational project include political activism tips and reports highlighting examples of student activism. A monthly SPLC publication to teens promotes a highlighted political movement, normally focusing on minority, feminist, and homosexual youth organizations. The program also provides publications to students such as "Ways to fight hate on campus" suggesting ideas for community activism and diversity education.
"Teaching Tolerance" also provides advice and materials for parents aimed at encouraging multiculturalism in the upbringing of their children. A guide published by the project urges parents to "examine the 'diversity profile' for your children's friends," move to "integrated and economically diverse neighborhoods," and discourage children from playing with toys or adopting heroes that "promote violence." The publication also advises parents on the use of culturally sensitive language such as promoting gender-neutral phrasings such as "Someone Special Day" instead of the traditional Mothers Day or Fathers Day and urges them to ensure "cultural diversity reflected in your home's artwork, music and literature."
The SPLC's educational programs are not without controversy and critics of the SPLC, such as Discover the Networks(DSN), argue that the "Teaching Tolerance" program is "far from a good-faith effort to instruct schoolchildren in the merits of tolerance." According to DSN the program is used to promote a left-wing political agenda and "spread the virtues of political correctness" among children and teachers. As an example of this agenda, DSN points to a cover story from a "Teaching Tolerance" publication aimed at students that claimed the popular Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was "little more than a glorified vision of white patriarchy," complained its actors were "whiter than white," and denounced its themes as "Eurocentric."
Controversy
The SPLC has a history of attracting controversy surrounding its politics, "hate group" identification and monitoring methods, and financial practices. Some criticisms have focused on its fundraising methods. For example, a 1996 USA Today article claimed that the Southern Poverty Law Center is "the nation's richest civil rights organization", with $68 million in assets at the time (in the fiscal year ending in 2003, its assets totalled $156 million ). A 2003 article in the Fairfax Journal (of Fairfax, Virginia) claimed that 89% of income was spent on fundraising and administration.
David Horowitz
Myles Kantor of the anti-Fidel Castro Pureplay Press and conservative columnist David Horowitz have both accused the SPLC of exaggerating the threat of racism in order to increase fund-raising revenue and of wrongfully applying the term "hate group" to legitimate organizations.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and Morris Dees have engaged in a dispute with Horowitz over material written by Chip Berlet related to Horowitz's campaign against slavery reparations, which the SPLC claims constitutes "hate speech". Horowitz writes:
- The effect is to multiply the number of racial hate groups, to scare well-meaning citizens into the belief that mainstream civil rights organizations like the Center for the Study of Popular Culture are really fever swamps of hate that deserve to be lumped alongside the Ku Klux Klan. The purpose of this fear-mongering is transparent. It is to fill the already wealthy coffers of your organization by exploiting unsuspecting donors into helping you promote leftwing agendas under the guise of civil rights.
The SPLC's Mark Potok responded to Horowitz by stating "we believe Mr. Berlet’s article is backed up by the evidence, and we stand by the article as it was published." Potok also forwarded a reply from Berlet in which the latter alleged that Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture uses "inflammatory, mean-spirited, and divisive language that dismisses the idea that there are serious unresolved issues concerning racism and white supremacy in the United States." Horowitz subsequently replied in a letter to Dees, asserting that Berlet's attack on the CSPC "applies mutatis mutandis to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which exacerbates societal tensions by exaggerating the number of hate groups in America and by proposing that they come in only one color and one political disposition. It does this by labeling legitimate political differences as racism and bigotry."
Montgomery Advertiser investigation
In 1994 The Montgomery Advertiser published an 9-part investigative series alleging financial mismanagement, poor management practices, misleading fundraising, and institutionalized racism at the Center. The newspaper summarized its investigation as producing evidence of "a complex portrait of a wealthy civil rights organization essentially controlled by one man: Morris Dees." (Montgomery Avertisor, Feb. 13-14 1994) Findings from the Advertiser investigation included the following:
- 12 of 13 African-American former employees of the SPLC who were contacted by the newspaper reported experiencing or observing racial discrimination during their employment. Black former employees were quoted stating that the Center was "like a plantation" run by white supervisors.
- The SPLC's legal department is composed primarily of Caucasians and had only employed two African American attorneys on staff over 23 years of operation (as of 1994).
- From 1984 to 1994 the SPLC received almost $62 million in contributions but spent only $20.8 million on its anti-poverty and anti-discrimination programs.
- An SPLC fundraising letter that raised several million dollars for the organization claims the Center's legal team secured a $7 million victim's settlement against the Ku Klux Klan for the lynching of Michael McDonald, however McDonald's mother and heir Beulah Mae received only $51,874.70 from the settlement.
- A "random sampling of donors" to the SPLC, defined as "people who receive a steady stream of fund-raising letters and newsletters," indicated "they had no idea the Law Center was so wealthy" when interviewed.
The Advertiser also interviewed several former SPLC affiliates who alleged financial improprieties on the part of the Center. Pamela Summers, formerly a legal fellow with the Center, told the newspaper that the Center's legal department operates "as though the sole, overriding goal is to make money." Summers accused Dees of avoiding "go(ing) to court" on discrimination cases and instead relying upon financial contributions to obtain money.
The Center threatened legal action against the newspaper during the publication of the series, and lobbied against its consideration for journalism awards. Nonetheless, the investigative series was a finalist for a 1995 Pulitzer Prize.
The Center states that "During its last fiscal year, the Center spent approximately 65% of its total expenses on program services. The Center also placed a portion of its income into a special, board-designated endowment fund to support the Center's future work. At the end of the fiscal year, the endowment stood at $120.6 million."
Harper's Magazine investigation
In November 2000, Harper's Magazine published an exposé of the SPLC corroborating the Montgomery Advertiser's allegations of financial mismanagement, poor management practices, misleading fundraising, and institutionalized racism at the Center. In "The Church of Morris Dees," Ken Silverstein writes:
Morris Dees doesn't need your financial support. The SPLC is already the wealthiest 'civil rights' group in America... One pitch, sent out in 1995 -- when the center had more than $60 million in reserves -- informed would-be donors that the "strain on our current operating budget is the greatest in our 25-year history." Back in 1978, when the center had less than $100 million, a sum that, one 1989 newsletter promised, would allow the center "to cease the costly and often unreliable task of fundraising." Today, the SPLC's treasury bulges with $120 million, and it spends twice as much on fund-raising -- $5.76 million last year -- as it does on legal services for victims of civil rights abuses. The American Institute of Philanthropy gives the center one of the worst ratings of any group it monitors, estimating that the SPLC could operate for 4.6 years without making another tax-exempt nickel from its investments or raising another tax-deductible cent from well-meaning "people like you."
Silverstein adds that most alleged "hate" groups on the SPLC's are non-violent and reports that 95 percent of hate crimes are committed by "lone wolves." Further, he says that the SPLC's "'other important work for justice' consists mainly on spying on private citizens... a practice that, however seemingly justified, should give civil libertarians pause."
Chronicles Magazine article
In a July 2004 article in the paleoconservative Chronicles magazine, Kevin Michael Grace complains that the SPLC joined the drive to remove Alabama State Chief Justice Roy Moore for displaying the Ten Commandments, and that the SPLC has turned its attention to the immigration-reform movement.
Groups listed as hate groups
A continuing source of controversy is the identification and monitoring of organizations that the SPLC labels hate groups. The SPLC describes their definition of hate group as:
All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics. Listing here does not imply that a group advocates or engages in violence or other criminal activity.
The SPLC further categorizes these groups as Black Separatism (such as Nation of Islam), Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazi, Christian Identity, Racist Skinhead, Neo-Confederate, and Other. Some organizations described by the SPLC as hate groups object strenuously to this characterization of them, particularly those in the Other category. Some have protested that such designations are meaningless political smears, and the SPLC's reports are biased and misrepresent their beliefs. Some have criticized the SPLC's tactics as qualifying it itself to be a hate group, doing more harm to anti-racism than to genuine racism.
There are 161 organizations in the U.S. categorized as Other in 2005, including the following:
- American Renaissance
- Council of Conservative Citizens
- David Duke's European-American Unity and Rights Organization
- Institute for Historical Review
- Jewish Defense League
- Nationalist Movement
- National Socialist Movement
- Occidental Quarterly
- Pioneer Fund
- Resistance Records
- Stormfront
- VDARE
- Volksfront
- Voz de Aztlan
- Westboro Baptist Church
External links
- Southern Poverty Law Center official site
- SPLC Internet-based activism project from Tolerance.org
- Briefing Paper on SPLC from Learning to Give
Critical
- 'The Church of Morris Dees' - A critical look at the SPLC and its founder from Harper's Magazine.
- Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism- Panel discussion with the investigative reporter/editor who helped cover the SPLC for The Montgomery Advertiser
- "Strictly From Hunger: The Morris Dees Story," Kevin Michael Grace, 'Chronicles, July 2004