'We can't afford not to fight;' Morris Dees takes bigotry to court.

Editors' Note: Morris Dees Jr. speaks quietly and evenly, with a southern accent that smooths the sharp edges off his words. The sound seems at odds with the things he is talking about hatred and bigotry, cruelty and violence. These are the persistent human vices that Dees has been fighting as a civil tights lawyer for three decades.

Dees grew up in segregated Alabama, the son of a tenant cotton farmer In the 1960s, the example of civil rights crusaders transformed him from a hugely successful mail-order publisher and general practice lawyer into a committed advocate in the struggle for racial equality.

Dees cofounded the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery in 1971 and now serves as its chief trial counsel. For 25 years the center has represented victims of discrimination and bias-motiviated crimes. Its Klanwatch project tracks and reports on hate violence around the country, and a new Militia Task Force monitors emerging white-supremacist paramilitary groups.

Dees is perhaps best known for victories tn civil lawsuits against organized hate groups. In two widely publicized cases, the center won damages verdicts for the families of murder victims, driving the United Klans of America and the California-based White Aryan Resistance out of business.

A fire set by Klansmen in 1983 burned down the center's first headquarters. The current building is secured by armed guards and surveillance cameras. Despite repeated threats on his life, Dees, at 60, remains steadfast in his work.

TRIAL Associate Editor Julie Gannon Shoop spoke with Dees m his office overlooking the white-domed Alabama Supreme Court, just two blocks from the small brick Baptist church where the faithful heard sermons delivered by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Dees talked about the changing nature of hate groups today, his legal strategy for fighting bias-motivated crime, and what attorneys can do to help stop extremist activity in their communities.

I understand your most recent case against a hate group arose from the burning of a black church in the South.

We recently filed a lawsuit against the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan -- that's a corporate Klan group operating in North and South Carolina -- and its South Carolina unit, as well as four Klan members, one of them an official of this group. Our charge is that these individuals conspired together to burn two black churches in Clarendon County, South Carolina, in 1995.

We're claiming that the Klan organization is responsible because these members were carrying out the Klan's racist goals by burning these churches.

This is the same theory you've used in other lawsuits against hate groups.

It's the same theory we've always used. We're seeking to hold the Klan organization liable, as well as the individual members who were involved.

We may add more defendants in this case, possibly even some of the Klan officials at the top levels. We may be able to show that they are vicariously liable. Even though they may not have told someone to burn a church, they told some of their local officials to use violence against minorities. In carrying that out, if a member burns a church, it might be considered carrying out the direct orders of the Klan leaders.

Is the Klan one monolithic group?

First, let me say that the Ku Klux Klan organizations in the country, today are on the outs. They are very few and small.

There is no one Klan. In the case of Michael Donald, a young black man who was lynched by Klansmen here in Alabama, the group we sued was the United Klans of America. That was probably the biggest Klan group since the days of the civil rights movement. There was also a group called the Invisible Empire. We sued them over in Georgia for beating up a group of marchers there in the late 1980s. There's a group we sued down in Texas for interfering with Vietnamese fishermen's rights. It was called the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

These names sound similiar, but they're all different groups. A lot of them have been put out of business by criminal actions by the Justice Department and by our lawsuits.

There's been a change in the racist, white-supremacist, neo-Nazi-type individuals in this country. They've gone from the Klan into paramilitary and skinhead groups. For example, Tom Metzger, who we sued in Oregon for the killing of an Ethiopian student in Portland, is a California white-supremacy leader with a group called the White Aryan Resistance. Before that, Metzger headed up the California Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

So you're seeing an evolution of hate groups from one form to another?

"Evolution" might be a good word. They change their stripes, so to speak, but they keep the same essential philosophy.

The rhetoric changes somewhat. The militia groups today, for example, don't use racism and anti-Semitism as their recruitment tools. They use antigovernment rhetoric. A lot of the leaders in some of the more violent militia groups have a long history as racist leaders. But when these groups use racism as their recruitment tool, it turns off a lot of people.

So they're using a different message. After Randy Weavers wife and child were shot at Ruby Ridge, and after the burning of the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, these racist leaders said, "Look, we told you so. The government is out to kill its own citizens. They just passed the ban on assault weapons, and they're going to take our weapons away. They're going to disarm us and kill us." That message brought in thousands of new recruits.

But don;'t many of these groups stiff advocate the creation of an all-white nation?

They fear a one-world government controlled by Jews. They call our country ZOG -- Zionist Occupied Government.

If you attract 1,000 people in a militia group, you'll attract a Timothy McVeigh. Timothy McVeigh participated in the fringes of the Michigan militia movement. He carried with him a little book called The Turner Diaries. This is the bible of the militia movement, especially the hard-core, anti-Semitic, racist branch.

It's a fictional account of the overthrow of the United States government in the late 1990s by a little band of Aryans. It ends with the genocide of all Jews and minorities in America, leaving only white Aryans. Its a gruesome little tale.

It's rumored that McVeigh tore a very select group of pages out of the book and sent them to his sister, Jennifer, and that may be her testimony against him at the trial. The significance of these pages was that this fictional race war started with the bombing of a federal building, using 4,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer mixed with diesel fuel, driven up to a federal building at nine in the morning. Its exactly like what McVeigh allegedly did.

In other words, McVeigh, if he's guilty, was living out the role of the white Aryan hero in The Turner Diaries in bringing about a race war. So the most tragic incident of domestic terrorism in this country's history so far, if McVeigh is guilty, was directly motivated by the militia movement.

So you consider the Oklahoma City bombing to be a hate crime.

I think its a classic hate crime, assuming Timothy McVeigh did it When he drove away from that site and when he heard that awful explosion, McVeigh saw himself as a patriot, a savior of America, a good soldier doing his duty. The fad that innocent people had to die was simply the price that you paid in a war. I think the bombing is a hate crime because the ultimate, bottom-line motivation was anti-Semitism.

Let me ask a more general question that might put some of this in context Thirty years after the gains made in the civil rights movement, it seems as though we're in a civil rights backlash. We've had a Supreme Court decision rolling back affirmative action, we've had proposed state and federal laws banning antidiscrimination protections for gays and lesbians, and we've seen growing anti-immigrant sentiment among many whites. Do you think we're backsliding on civil rights law?

I think there's definitely been a change in attitude on the part of the general public, which is reflected by politicians and the Supreme Court Public pressure today is causing politicians to talk against affirmative action, against voting districts that guarantee a black seat in Congress, and against immigrants who appear to be taking slices from a pie that Americans see as shrinking, as well as taking money from government programs like food stamps.

We have made enormous improvements on civil rights, but they've brought problems. You don't have those obvious barriers anymore. The back of the bus isn't black and the front white. This brings a much more complicated situation. Our civil rights suits are much more difficult now because discrimination is so much harder to put your finger on.

Can you give me an example of a civil rights case in which you had that problem?

We had the case to integrate the Alabama state troopers, filed in 1970. It went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987. When we started the case, there were 650 white troopers and no blacks. That's easy. The trial court imposed a hiring ratio of one black trooper hired for every one white employed until the troop force was 25 percent black. Once we got some new classes coming in 25 percent black, it looked great.

Then white trooper officials began discriminating against blacks at the training academy. They busted new black recruits for minor infractions. And when a black trooper got out on the road, if his car was found a quart low on oil, he got a demerit and was often fired.

So the numbers were right, but other things were wrong.

Right. And then blacks never did get promoted up to sergeants and captains and majors.

Over the last 25 years we've been back in court dozens of times saying, "But you're discriminating in this area over here." And the state of Alabama says, "We're not discriminating. Look, we've got a black trooper driving around with Governor Wallace all over the nation." Its much more difficult to prove this sort of insidious, hidden discrimination.

In 1987 we took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court and won a one-for-one hiring ratio -- not just for entry level, but for sergeants, captains, and majors. We dropped the case in 1995 after we felt the state was complying.

That case also tells the story of the civil rights movement in America in other ways. When we filed the suit in 1970, the Nixon Justice Department was on our side, supporting quotas. When we argued before the Supreme Court in 1987, the department was on the side of Alabama, arguing against quotas. During oral argument, I thought we've come light years since 1970.

In tracking hate crimes, has your Klanwatch project been able to note any trends? The Justice Department says we can't compare its hate crime statistics from year to year because a different number of jurisdictions reports each year. Do you have any sense whether these crimes are increasing or decreasing?

I think overall we're seeing a slight increase in hate crimes. You can't track the numbers easily. A fight in a bar can be classified as an assault and battery, or it can be a gay-bashing incident. The police might write it up as a young man walking into a bar with another man and some macho-type guy beats him up, and that's just an assault to the cop who comes to the scene. An investigator trained to look for hate crimes might check to see if the attacker thought the victim was gay.

We traditionally think of hate crimes as those committed by whites against blacks. Are hate crimes of other varieties, including acts against whites by members of various minority groups, increasing?

Absolutely. There's been a democratization of hate crimes in America. In 1993, we did a report on hate-crime murders. Those are cases where some type of hate bias was the motive, like a gay-bashing killing. About as many whites were killed by blacks as blacks killed by whites in 1992.

When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Wisconsin's law on enhanced punishments for hate crimes, it was a black hate crime against a white in that case. And you have Asians attacking Hispanics, Hispanics attacking blacks, and so on. Our clipping service covers 13,000 newspapers, and we report all these incidents.

I read a report recently saying that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, and Firearms and the FBI have investigated 230 church fires in 1995 and 1996 and that only 41 percent of those involved black churches. And when you focus only on black churches, about a third of the people arrested in those arsons were black. Has the racial element been overplayed in the church arson story?

There's no question that a lot of groups with self-interest pushed the story that the church burnings were all racially motivated. As you said, a lot of the black churches, even when two or three were burned in one area, turned out to have been burned by blacks.

I'm not saying that none of the burnings were racially motivatived. There are 55,000 to 65,000 black churches in America and probably 300,000 white churches, so if 41 percent of the churches burned are black, that would be a high proportion. Our view is that its not an organized racist conspiracy by groups. That doesn't mean that some racist individual might not decide to burn a church.

We do know that the two South Carolina churches that we filed suit on were burned for racially motivated reasons, and we're going to prove that in court.

As I was doing research to prepare for this interview, I came across a surprising of hate propaganda on the Internet some of it targeted at you personally. Do you think this new electronic medium is increasing participation in hate activity?

It's probably the most dangerous aspect of the modem organized hate movement Before the Internet, a Klan group or White Aryan Resistance group had to have a newsletter. They had to have names and addresses, they had to mail it out every couple of months, they had to get money to print it. It was an expensive deal, and it was limited.

But now, for example, William Pierce who wrote The Turner Diaries, has a Web site for his National Vanguard group. He can change his home page on a daily basis, on an hourly basis, and the word spreads among his supporters.

Now you've got somebody sitting out there in cyberspace math the ability to down-load materials from all these places just for the cost of subscribing to America Online. So more people will have access to this material. I think its extremely frightening.

Do you think some kind of regulation is order?

You know, I don't even understand how to work the thing. I sure wouldn't know how to regulate it. If you start regulating, the question is, who's going to be on the committee to decide on the regulating? I oppose censorship on the Internet.

This is related to the larger issue of hate speech versus free speech. Colleges and universities have tried to implement speech codes to restrict hate speech on campus, and courts have held some of these codes unconstitutional Do you think there is way to constitutionally regulate hate speech?

I don't think you should try to regulate speech on college campuses or anywhere -- but especially on campuses, where people are trying to learn the democratic system and how it functions. What may be hateful to one person is not to another, and who's going to make the decision? I'd rather leave it to the free marketplace of ideas.

In the Metzger case, there was an issue of free speech, and we were worried about what a liberal Oregon jury might do. And here was Tom Metzger, who said, "I'm 1,000 miles away from this murder. I'm down in California. I didn't know the victim, and I didn't know the people who killed him. I'm just pushing my ideas about the superiority of the white Aryan race. That's my right, and you can't hold me liable because some skinheads read my stuff and took it on themselves to go kill a black person."

My trial theme was, "In America, you have the right to hate, but you don't have the right to hurt." We said Metzger stepped across the line. And that line was this: He sent an agent to Portland, and that agent testified for us that Metzger told him that the race war that they hoped would come one day would only come if they encouraged acts of racial violence.

Just because you print something or put it on television doesn't mean its protected speech. Metzger published a brochure called "Clash and Bash" describing how young white skinheads should go out on the street and bash in the heads of blacks. That became a critical piece of evidence to show Metzger's motive and intent. So the jury found that he stepped over the line.

Realistically, what can these lawsuits accomplish? Have you succeeded in collecting damages for victims?

When a civil jury gives you a verdict of $12 million against Tom Metzger, that's what they believe the egregious injury was worth. It doesn't mean they think Metzger has $12 million. I invited them to make a statement, and the bigger the verdict, the better the message.

On the other hand, Tom Metzger was taking in $15,000 to $20,000 a month at the time we filed that lawsuit. He had a big mailing list, he had skinhead units all over the nation, he had organizers, he had hot-line -- so we moved in to collect.

It took a lot of nitty-gritty post-judgment work to find out, well, where is Tom Metzger working today? What does he have? We took everything out of his TV repair business. He had a house trailer that was used for skinheads to meet in up in the hills, probably worth $1,000. We had it removed from the lot. It cost us $3,000 to have it removed, but it was symbolically important. We forced Metzger to sell his home and the land around it.

We got a master appointed to monitor his post office box because we knew how much money was coming in -- he was selling videotapes and this, that, and the other. For over four years, this master went to Metzger's post office box once a week, opened it, got the mail out with Metzger standing there, took every check out. We got a third of the money under a court order. Metzger had to hand over the cash to us, and we put it in the bank for little Henok Seraw, the victims son, who lived in Ethiopia. Now he's in America going to school.

After three years Metzger's money began to decline, and it hit a stable amount. Now he pays us a check every month instead of our going to the box We have the right, though, to go monitor the box at any time we want to.

Today, Tom Metzger is a mere echo of himself. His newspaper is only four pages, it only comes out every several months when he can get it out, the stuff he's selling is recycled junk, and almost nobody follows him anymore.

So your strategy is working.

One strategy is working. Hit them in the pocketbook. Put them out of business.

Can lawyers is more traditional practices do anything to help stein the tide of hate in our society?

Lawyers can do a lot, because generally lawyers are looked on with respect I know we've got some lawyer bashing going on, but generally lawyers hold positions of leadership in society.

Everybody's got their own fish to fry and family to feed, and they don't want to get involved, but something a lawyer certainly could do would be to volunteer to represent a victim of a hate crime. Or, say, if a gay person is bashed, there's nothing wrong with a lawyer speaking to the person and saying, "I'm calling to tell you that you have some legal rights here. Since I'm calling you, I can't solicit your business, but there are a lot of good lawyers in this town. I can recommend some good lawyers." A lot of people don't know what their rights are.

Or maybe a housing complex consistently rejects Asians or blacks -- lawyer can get involved in correcting that situation.

Essentially it involves taking some initiative to make the justice system work. That ought to be lawyers, prime goal, not just to be technicians writing up wills and deeds and processing cases through court.

Do you think it's possible that we will ever be a multicultural democracy relatively free of hate, or at least free of hate-motivated violence?

I'm very optimistic that things will improve. But we're not going to eliminate hate and intolerance, because it doesn't come from the conditions in our society. It comes from our families. It comes from the type of individual who seeks out somebody he can feel better than. Sometimes this causes him to go do things to those people, hurtful things.

We can't afford not to always fight against this. A lot of people say we'll never have another Nazi Germany. That wasn't that long ago. But we've had genocide all over the world since -- in Africa, Bosnia -- so it can happen.

I think its important for each of us to do what we can along the way. Yes, hate is always going to be math us, and, yes, we're going to make improvements. We take three steps forward and two back.