Adeel Hassan and Karen Zraick

The president, Richard Cohen, did not give a specific reason for the dismissal of Dees, 82, but in a statement released Thursday, Cohen said, “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.”

He added that an independent assessment of the center, which is based in Montgomery, Alabama, will soon examine the workplace to ensure that it would be “one in which all voices are heard and all staff members are respected.”

“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 said.

In recent years, the center has come under scrutiny for its classifications of “hate groups,” and whether the organization has abused that label in pursuit of a political agenda or increased donations.

The center’s most recent tax documents showed an endowment of $471 million. In response to criticism about its wealth, the center has pointed to the high cost of engaging in long, complicated legal battles.

In the early 70s, Dees, the son of an Alabama farmer, sold his book publishing business to begin the civil rights law practice that would eventually become the Southern Poverty Law Center. His co-founders were civil rights leader Julian Bond and another young Montgomery lawyer, Joe Levin.

In 1981, Dees won $7 million in damages against the United Klans of America on behalf of a family of Michael Donald, a 19-year-old black man whose body was left hanging in a tree in Mobile, Alabama.

The verdict was awarded by an all-white jury after Dees compared Donald to martyrs of the civil rights movement, like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “They sacrificed a human being to get some publicity for the Klan,” Dees said. “He’ll go down in civil rights history in the fight for black rights. I hope your verdict goes down in history right beside him.”

In a 2017 profile published by Politico, Dees was described as a “marketing genius,” who was known informally as “the Mother Teresa of Montgomery.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/us/morris-dees-southern-poverty-law-center-fired.html" id="61d22e70-7c60-362e-a965-bf5fefe2eb7f">The New York Times</a>.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the nation’s largest legal advocacy groups, announced Wednesday that its co-founder and chief trial lawyer, Morris Dees, was fired after nearly a half-century, during which he helped grow the organization into a legal powerhouse with an endowment of nearly half a billion dollars focused on hate crimes.

Morris Dees, a Co-Founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Is Ousted

In the early ‘70s, Dees, the son of an Alabama farmer, sold his book publishing business to begin the civil rights law practice that would eventually become the Southern Poverty Law Center. His co-founders were civil rights leader Julian Bond and another young Montgomery lawyer, Joe Levin.

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Adeel Hassan and Karen Zraick

Articles written by the author

Morris Dees, a Co-Founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Is Ousted

Morris Dees, a Co-Founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Is Ousted