Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 920/832-6590
For Immediate Release
October 16, 2000

Noted Civil Rights Attorney Morris Dees Discusses Tolerance in Fox
Valley Address


     APPLETON, WIS. -- Celebrated civil rights activist and co-founder
of the Southern Poverty Law Center Morris Dees brings his message of
tolerance and social justice to Appleton for a keynote address at
Appleton West High School. 
     Dees presents, "Hope and Tolerance for the New Millennium,"
Wednesday, Oct. 25 at 7 p.m. in the West auditorium.  As a follow-up to
Dees' address, several area leaders will participate in a community
forum to discuss how Dees' remarks apply to issues facing the Fox
Cities.  The Community Leaders Forum will be held Thursday, Oct. 26 at 7
p.m. in the Student Union at UW-Fox Valley.  Both events are free and
open to the public.
     Best known for his battles with white supremacist groups, Dees
helped found and fund the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery,
Ala., in 1971 in an effort to provide legal assistance to minorities and
the poor.  In 1991, Dees established the Teaching Tolerance Project as
an extension of the Center's legal efforts.  The national education
program is dedicated to helping America's teachers foster equity,
respect and understanding in classrooms and beyond.
     Through the SPLC, Dees has tackled some of the country's most
celebrated civil rights cases, using lawsuits to destroy the finances of
hate groups.  In seven such suits, Dees has never lost, beginning in
1981 when he sued the Ku Klux Klan and won a precedent-setting $7
million judgement for the lynching of an African-American in Mobile,
Ala.  In 1990, he won a $12 million verdict for the family of an
Ethiopian student murdered by Nazi-like Skinheads in Oregon and two
years ago Dees won a $37.8 million jury verdict against the Christian
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan for burning a Baptist Church in South
Carolina.  In September, Dees won a $6.3 million judgement against the
Aryan Nations for an assault on a woman and her son outside the group's
Idaho headquarters.
     The target of numerous death threats, Dees also more recently
focused his attention on radical militia groups.  In 1994, he warned
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno of domestic terrorist strikes -- six
months before the Oklahoma City bombing.  
     He is the author of the 1996 book, "Gathering Storm: America's
Militia Threat," and also chronicled his trial against white supremacist
Thomas Metzger and his White Aryan Resistance group for the beating
death of a young black student in Portland in his  book, "Hate on Trial:
The Case Against America's Most Dangerous Neo-Nazi."  A
made-for-television movie of Dees' life, "Line of Fire," was first
broadcast in 1991.
     A graduate of the University of Alabama Law School, Dees has been
widely honored for his work, earning the National Education
Association's Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Award in 1990 and the
Roger Baldwin Award from the American Civil Liberties Union, among
others.
     Dees' appearance is sponsored by Appleton's Memorial Presbyterian
Church in association with Presbytery of Winnebago, the Appleton Area
School District, the Appleton Police Department, Lawrence University,
the University of Wisconsin Fox Valley and Toward Community: Unity in
Diversity.