"Thanks to the Southern Poverty Law Center, we are a better and more tolerant nation."
—Julian Bond
Chairman, NAACP
A Horrific Murder
Brutally beaten and lynched by two members of the United Klans of America, Michael Donald's body was left hanging from a tree in downtown Mobile, Alabama. It was 1981 and the Klan was about to get away with murder, again.
Though the two Klan members responsible for Donald's murder were sent to prison, the organization itself was not held accountable for that death, or any of the civil rights murders Klan members were responsible for.
That changed when attorneys at the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a suit on behalf of Donald's mother, Beulah Mae Donald. In 1987, the Center won an historic $7 million verdict against the United Klans. The group was forced to turn over its national headquarters to Beulah Mae, putting it out of business.
That victory and others sent the message that the brutal actions of white supremacist groups would no longer be accepted in the United States. Unfortunately it did not mean that hate, bias and intolerance would go away.
Anti-immigration Furor Fuels Hate Groups
Since 2000, the Center's Intelligence Project has documented a 33 percent rise, to 803, in the number of active hate groups in the United States. This growth can be attributed in part to the racist extremism stoked by the nation's debate over immigration.
Recently the Center revealed neo-Nazi involvement in the Minuteman Project - a group of armed vigilantes who claimed to be “peacefully observ(ing) the Arizona border as a protest against illegal immigration.”
But the hate directed at undocumented immigrants isn't the only injustice the Center is working to address. Legal, documented workers also face daily abuses.
Under the current “guest worker” program, legal immigrants who work in the United States face serious, widespread exploitation. Workers recruited by U.S. companies to plant forests, harvest vegetables and even to clean up the wreckage from Hurricane Katrina are routinely underpaid and denied basic rights. They typically must pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars in expenses to obtain their job, and many are required to put up collateral, sometimes even their homes, to cover the expenses.
In addition, employers often seize workers' passports and other identity documents upon their arrival. This effectively creates a captive workforce unlikely to complain about wages and working conditions through fear of losing their home and uncertainty over their legal status.
The Center is taking action to stop these injustices against immigrant workers. Its attorneys have filed a number of lawsuits in recent months, including one against food giant Del Monte, to hold corporations responsible for the way their workers are treated.
Justice For All
Pursuing justice for immigrants is just one small part of the Center's work.While its battles with the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups garner most of the headlines, the Center stands up for victims of all types of injustice: children, immigrants, institutionalized persons, victims of hate crimes, gays and lesbians and others.
Children:
- Children caught up in the country's juvenile justice systems are among the most vulnerable members of our society. In the past year, Center attorneys have worked on behalf of children in Mississippi's youth prisons who were beaten, shackled, tied to poles and hogtied. In some cases, young girls who were suicidal were stripped naked and left in pitch-black solitary confinement rooms for hours and in at least one instance, three days.
- The Center's award-winning Teaching Tolerance project, established in 1991, strives to reduce prejudice among children by providing teachers with free classroom curricula and other resources for combating intolerance and bias. Projects include the film Mighty Times: The Children's March, which won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short in 2005. The film tells the story of how courageous schoolchildren in Birmingham stood up to fire hoses and attack dogs to challenge segregation.
- Mix It Up at Lunch is a national program that asks students to meet someone outside their usual social circle. By sitting with someone new at lunch, students step outside their comfort zones to break down barriers that often lead to bias and prejudice in the classrooms. Millions of students in more than 9,000 schools participated in the program in November.
- The Civil Rights Memorial Center, opened in October 2005, honors the memory and achievements of those who lost their lives during the Civil Rights Movement. It expands the experience of the Civil Rights Memorial, designed by architect Maya Lin.
- Online curriculum guides such as “The Power of Words” offer educators unique ways to address complex problems. “Words” explores common labels for ethnic groups, women and sexual minorities.
Institutionalized persons:
The Center has long sought to protect the rights of all citizens, including those in prisons. In recent years, Center attorneys have represented numerous clients, including diabetic inmates in an Alabama prison whose blood sugar was not being monitored properly and one inmate who died from malnutrition after his dentures were repaired at the prison infirmary with a strong over-the-counter glue.
Representing hatred's victims:
In September, Center attorneys filed suit on behalf of Billy Ray Johnson, a black man with mental disabilities who was used for entertainment by four white men at their “pasture party.” One man taunted him, telling Johnson to leave before the “KKK comes and gets you.” Eventually one of the men knocked Johnson unconscious. The men dumped Johnson's body along a desolate road.
Johnson is now in a nursing home, with little chance of ever recovering from the brain injuries he suffered. The Center filed suit to ensure that Johnson's abusers are held accountable for their actions.
Do Something
These are just a few of the ways the Center works to advance tolerance and justice in America. But there are ways you, too, can help the country's underserved and underrepresented.
- Sign our petition urging President Bush to order the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U. S. Department of Labor and other federal agencies to ensure that Katrina cleanup workers are treated fairly.
- Consult our Speak Up guide for ways to respond to everyday bigotry.
- Visit our Hate Map to learn about hate groups in your area.
- Encourage teachers in your town to order some of our free teaching kits for use in their classrooms.
- Request our Mix It Up materials and offer schools a way to combat bias and prejudice in the lunchroom.
- Test yourself for hidden biases.
- Write in bias-free terms.
- Visit the Civil Rights Memorial Center.
- Make a donation to support the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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