![]() ![]() Large settlements and other legal sanctions bankrupted some of the groups and scared off many others by the late 1980s, these groups had declined significantly in activity and influence. 8 In 1979, the SPLC shifted its legal strategy and began suing violent white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and its affiliates for hate crimes committed by their members. 7ĭees and Levin spent much of their early years conducting pro bono legal services in death-penalty appeals and suing to desegregate the then-all-white Alabama Highway Patrol. 6 Activist Julian Bond, who later chaired the NAACP, is also mentioned as a co-founder. ![]() The SPLC received nonprofit status in 1971. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was co-founded as a civil rights litigation group in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1971 by Morris Dees, a lawyer and direct marketing expert, and lawyer Joseph Levin, Jr. In his guilty plea agreement, Corkins claimed the SPLC’s labeling of FRC as a hate group for its opposition to same-sex marriage as the reason he singled out FRC. headquarters of the social conservative advocacy group Family Research Council (FRC). In 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins attacked the Washington, D.C. For a short time, charity aggregator Guidestar used SPLC’s hate group listings to apply so-called warning labels on 46 nonprofit organizations, but later removed the labels amid a heavy public backlash against its reliance on SPLC. Mainstream technology companies such as Google and Amazon have enlisted SPLC to help compile, track, and vet organizations based on alleged extremist activity. The SPLC uses its former credibility to smear its political foes despite this, SPLC is cited by left-leaning mainstream media outlets as a credible source for information about the mainstream right, to widespread criticism. SPLC’s labeling of political opponents as has resulted in mainstream conservative individuals and groups, as well as anti-extremist Muslims, being conflated with neo-Nazis, the KKK, and other actual extremist elements. Since its victories over the Klan in the 1980s, the SPLC has been widely criticized by both right-of-center and left-of-center observers for its excessive fundraising and controversial methodologies. 2 On April 2, 2019, the SPLC announced that attorney Karen Baynes-Dunning would replace Cohen as interim president. In later years, the SPLC leveraged its influence to collect and create widely-circulated reports about “hate group” activity around the country.ĭees was fired from his position as SPLC chief trial counsel in March 2019 for unspecific conduct violations. The SPLC combined its legal successes with Dees’ direct mail marketing expertise to raise millions of dollars. In its first two decades, the SPLC won high-profile civil rights cases and filed lawsuits credited with breaking the Ku Klux Klan. 1 They appointed civil rights activist Julian Bond as SPLC’s first president. SPLC was co-founded in 1971 by Morris Dees, a lawyer and direct marketing expert and fellow Alabama attorney, Joseph Levin, Jr. It has been criticized for its financial practices and for characterizing non-violent conventional conservative organizations as equivalent to violent extremists. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a controversial watchdog of extremist groups. ![]()
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