Upon his return flight home after a recent win in court, Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, chose a window seat on the airplane.
"I looked at this great nation below and thought 'Why, so late in this country's history, is it so hard for us to get along?'"
Dees' desire for the country to join together dominated his keynote address, "Hope and Tolerance for the New Millennium," Wednesday evening at Emens Auditorium. The presentation was sponsored by Excellence in Leadership.
The first item Dees, whose efforts to promote diversity have included the Civil Rights Memorial and lawsuits that have bankrupted the KKK, addressed was the greatness of this nation.
"As we enter this century, there's so much to be proud of," Dees said. "There are opportunities that your parents couldn't have imagined."
Dees said such prosperity and positive attitude is especially prominent since the events of Sept. 11.
"We suffered a horrible tragedy and all of us feel proud to be Americans as we rally together."
But Dees said negative issues still exist.
"I would be remiss without saying that, while good things happen, there are bad things, too. "
Dees said one such negative occurrence involved a case that he worked on involving an Ethiopian college student from Portland, Ore. The college student was on his way home from work when he was approached by a group from the White Aryan Resistance, a white supremacist organization based in California.
The group taunted him and threw punches before one member finally swung an aluminum baseball bat that crushed the student's skull and ended his life.
After a lengthy trial, the family of the student was awarded over $12 million.
Dees said he hopes the number of such type of cases will dwindle to the point of nonexistence and that peace will be reached among cultural groups.
"I'm not talking about the kind of love and friendship we have for family members or people who'd like you anyway," Dees said. "It's about understanding those people who are different from you."
"That's your challenge," he said. "If America's going to work, it will be because we found a place at America's table for all of us -- a table of personhood."
Dees helped co-found the SPLC in 1971. His role in the non-profit law firm is to fight legal battles for those who are discriminated against by others.
One such case involved the lynching of a black man by the United Klans of America. The SPLC sued United Klans and won $7 million that was awarded to the victim's mother. The case bankrupted the United Klans and obliterated the organization.
Dees graduated from the University of Alabama Law School in 1963. He was awarded "Trial Lawyer of the Year" by the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice and received the National Education Association's Martin Luther King Jr. Award. ))2%*FMorris DeesDNEditorial))2SORTZ+â-ä2AUDT
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