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CIVIL
RIGHTS LAWYER MORRIS DEES SPEAKS JAN. 19 AT OHIO
UNIVERSITY
Editors:
A photo of Morris Dees is available at www.ohiou.edu/news/pix/Dees.JPG
ATHENS,
Ohio -- Civil rights attorney Morris Dees will speak on
social justice and education at 8 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 19
in Templeton-Blackburn Memorial Auditorium on the Athens
campus of Ohio University. As co-founder and chief trial
counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center, Dees has won
many judgments against extremist organizations by persuading
juries to hold racist leaders accountable for their crimes.
A native
of Alabama, Dees started thinking about a legal career and
civil rights in 1956 when he watched Autherine Lucy, the
first black woman admitted to the University of Alabama at
Tuscaloosa, being taunted and jeered at as she entered the
newly integrated school. Dees went on the University of
Alabama Law School and graduated in 1960.
After
practicing corporate law for several years, Dees in 1971
founded the Southern Poverty Law Center, offering free legal
services to the poor. Dees has won millions of dollars in
cases involving free speech, women's rights, the Ku Klux
Klan and the White Aryan Resistance. In 1998, he won a $37.8
million jury verdict against the Christian Knights of the Ku
Klux Klan and its leaders for burning the Macedonia Baptist
Church in Manning, South Carolina.
A
proponent and teacher of tolerance, Dee founded the Teaching
Tolerance project aimed at countering racist groups. The
project has distributed more than $4 million in videos,
books and training materials to schools that request
information.
The speech
is free and open to the public.
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