Southern Poverty Law Center

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a nonprofit organization in Montgomery, Alabama, founded in 1971 by the civil rights lawyers Morris Dees and Joseph Levin Jr., which describes its founding purpose as "to ensure that the promise of the civil rights movement became a reality for all."¹ It is best known for tracking and classifying groups it considers hate and extremist organizations, through its "extremist files" and its Hatewatch and Intelligence Report publications.¹²

Litigation and Security

Dees won a 7 million dollar judgment against the United Klans of America on behalf of Beulah Mae Donald, whose son had been murdered by Ku Klux Klan members in Mobile. The center's office was firebombed in 1983, and three Klansmen later pleaded guilty. It operates from a high-security building near the church where Martin Luther King Jr. first served as a pastor.²

Finances

The center's Form 990 for the fiscal year ending October 2025, filed on June 11, 2026, reported total revenue of 149,576,773 dollars, of which 127,336,336 dollars were contributions, 16,234,912 dollars came from the sale of assets and 5,571,519 dollars from investment income; expenses of 127,910,803 dollars; total assets of 921,762,979 dollars; and net assets of 886,648,000 dollars, up from 786,768,246 dollars a year earlier.³ Tax records for 2017 had shown about 450 million dollars in assets.²

Classifications

The center files the Pioneer Fund under its "White Nationalist" category. Its file describes the fund as founded in New York City in 1937 by Wickliffe Draper, with an original mission of "race betterment" for people "deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons," and records its grants to Arthur Jensen, J. Philippe Rushton, Richard Lynn and Jared Taylor; its support for the American Immigration Control Foundation and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, both of which the center lists as hate groups; the association of Roger Pearson with Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby; Rushton's leadership of the fund from 2002 to 2012, during which he personally received more than 1 million dollars; the 286,372 dollars paid to Lynn's Ulster Institute from 2002 to 2006; and Walter P. Kistler as a remaining major donor.⁴

In 2019 Hatewatch identified "Alexander Slavros," the founder of the Iron March forum, as Alisher Mukhitdinov through a domain registration record.⁵ The center's staff have testified before Congress on extremism: Heidi Beirich testified with the Anti-Defamation League's Mark Pitcavage before a House Armed Services subcommittee on February 11, 2020, on The Base, and at the House Armed Services Committee hearing on extremism in the armed forces on March 24, 2021, chief of staff Lecia Brooks testified that the center had "identified dozens of former and active military personnel among the membership of some of the country's most dangerous and violent white supremacist groups," including Atomwaffen Division.⁶⁷

2019 Leadership Crisis

On March 14, 2019, the center announced that it had fired Dees, whose employment had ended the previous day, without giving a reason. A statement by its president, Richard 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. 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." Dees, then 82, said the matter involved a personnel issue: "I think the Southern Poverty Law Center is a very fine group and I devoted nearly 50 years of my life to it and I'm proud of its work. About being fired, all I can say is it wasn't my decision and I wish the center the best."² The center announced "an immediate, top-to-bottom external review of our workplace culture and our past practices and policies," and less than two weeks after the firing Cohen stepped down, saying, "We've heard from our staff that we need to do a better job of making sure that our workplace embodies the values we espouse," and that the center had brought in Tina Tchen, formerly chief of staff to Michelle Obama, to conduct the review. The board chairman, Bryan Fair, said that "the walk towards justice must sometimes start at your own front door."⁸