Morris Dees
| Morris Dees | |
|---|---|
Dees in 2015
|
|
| Born |
Morris Seligman Dees, Jr. December 16, 1936 Shorter, Alabama, United States |
| Residence | Montgomery, Alabama |
| Occupation | Civil and political rights, social justice activist |
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. Along with his law partner, Joseph J. Levin Jr., Dees founded the SPLC in 1971. 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.
Dees was born in 1936 in Shorter, Alabama, the son of Annie Ruth (Frazer) and Morris Seligman Dees, Sr., tenant cotton farmers. His family was Baptist. His father was named "Morris Seligman" after a Jewish friend of Dees's grandfather. 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.
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. Dees's former partner Millard Fuller founded Habitat for Humanity International in 1976 and served in executive roles until 2005.
In his 1991 autobiography 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.
...
Wikipedia