Southern Poverty Law Center fires co-founder
Morris Dees is ousted amid workplace complaints by women and people of color.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has fired its famed co-founder, Morris Dees, over unspecified misconduct, the nonprofit announced Thursday, a stunning development at an organization that became a bedrock of anti-extremism research and activism under nearly half a century of Dees’ leadership.
While the organization’s leadership did not disclose the reason for Dees’ departure, staff at its headquarters in Montgomery, Ala., were told in an internal email that “although he made unparalleled contributions to our work, no one’s contributions can excuse that person’s inappropriate conduct.”
The Times has also learned that the organization, whose leadership is predominantly white, has been wrestling with complaints that women and people of color employed there do not feel valued. It was not immediately clear whether those issues were connected to the firing of Dees.
also sent two group letters to management on Thursday demanding reforms, sparked at least in part by the resignation last week of a highly respected black attorney at the organization.
One letter — signed by about two dozen employees and sent to the board of directors before news broke of Dees’ firing — said that internal “allegations of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism threaten the moral authority of this organization and our integrity along with it.”
In a public statement, Richard Cohen, president of the SPLC, announced that an outside organization would be hired immediately “to conduct a comprehensive assessment of our internal climate and workplace practices, to ensure that our talented staff is working in the environment that they deserve — one in which all voices are heard and all staff members are respected.”
Dees co-founded the Southern Poverty Law CenEmployees ter in 1971 and gained notoriety by suing members of the Ku Klux Klan, which resulted in the anti-hate organization’s offices being firebombed in 1983.
The son of a white tenant farmer in Alabama, he cut a swashbuckling figure as a Klan-busting attorney in the Deep South, drawing scorn in some mainstream corners for his showmanship and his prodigious fundraising abilities, which he had honed in his previous life as a millionaire direct-mail marketer.
His 1991 autobiography “reads like a treatment for a Hollywood epic,” The Times wrote in a review at the time.
In less mainstream corners, Dees’ name is loathed by white nationalists and other far-right groups targeted in lawsuits or published research by the center’s staff of lawyers, analysts and undercover operatives. In recent years, some conservatives have accused the center of casting too wide a net in defining what is a “hate” group.
In his statement about Dees, Cohen wrote: “As a civil rights organization, the SPLC is committed to ensuring that the conduct of our staff reflects the mission of the organization and the values we hope to instill in the world. When one of our own fails to meet those standards, no matter his or her role in the organization, we take it seriously and must take appropriate action.”
Cohen did not respond to requests for further comment.
Asked about the nature of Dees’ alleged misconduct, a spokesman for the organization said in an email: “We can’t comment on the details of individual personnel decisions.”
In an interview Thursday, Dees told the Montgomery Advertiser: “It was not my decision, what they did. I wish the center the absolute best. Whatever reasons they had of theirs, I don’t know.”
Lower-level staff members were caught off guard by Dees’ firing, which was announced internally in an email and a conference call Thursday morning.
Dees was not a regular presence for low-level staff at the organization’s sleek, modern downtown Montgomery headquarters, whose lobby contains remains from the firebombing as a memento and which is guarded by security staff.
In recent years, according to the center’s internal email to staff, Dees’ role has been focused on “donor relations” — expanding the Southern Poverty Law Center’s financial resources, which nearly totaled half a billion dollars in assets in 2017, according to the group’s most recently available public financial disclosures.
Over more than 40 years at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Dees formed coalitions with major civil rights groups, including the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. His firing took some civil rights leaders by surprise.
“Wow, that is a shocker to me,” said Benard Simelton, president of the Alabama NAACP chapter. “We don’t have a comment until we see what this is about.”
Simelton’s group has frequently teamed with the Southern Poverty Law Center on civil rights lawsuits.
The center has faced complaints in the past that it does not employ enough black staffers.
In an internal email to the organization’s legal department announcing her departure last Friday, a black attorney suggested the center needed to create a more inclusive work environment.
“As a woman of color, the experiences of staff of color and female staff have been particularly important to me ... and we recognize that there is more work to do in the legal department and across the organization to ensure that SPLC is a place where everyone is heard and respected and where the values we are committed to pursuing externally are also being practiced internally,” she wrote.
The Times is not identifying the attorney because she could not immediately be reached to confirm the authorship of the message.
The center’s leaders forwarded the attorney’s email to the rest of the staff, saying they were “grateful” for her work and said she “raised important issues of gender and race — issues that the leadership of SPLC is committed to addressing in an honest and forthright manner,” including additional training for management for “racial equity, inclusion and results.”