Saying this with a straight face

To the editor:

(re: “The sins of Southern Poverty law,” Sept. 20)

In his letter to the editor, Dimitri Cavalli asks if anyone can “say with a straight face that the tax-exempt and oddly named Southern Poverty Law Center has made us a more tolerant society in 2018, and made a real contribution to reducing bigotry and extremism in the United States today?”

First, with regard to its name, SPLC was founded in 1971 in Montgomery, Alabama, by two Southern lawyers to secure equal opportunities for minorities and the poor to benefit from the legislative victories of the civil rights movement. The special 40th anniversary issue of the SPLC Report tells us that “suing for monetary damages for victims of Klan violence, the SPLC was able to shut down several major Klan organizations and draw national attention to the growing threat of white supremacist activity.

“These civil suits would eventually result in judgments against 48 individuals and nine major white supremacist organizations for their roles in hate crimes. Multi-million-dollar judgments against the United Klans of America, the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations, and the Imperial Klans of America, among others, effectively put those organizations out of business.

“The mother of a lynching victim was able to buy her first home with money received in an SPLC suit against the Klan. An Ethiopian child received his college tuition from the White Aryan Resistance, the group held liable for his father’s murder. A black church burned by Klansmen in South Carolina took ownership of the Klan’s headquarters, following an historic jury verdict. And the Aryan Nation’s compound, home to some of the nation’s most violent white supremacists, was converted to a peace park following a successful SPLC lawsuit.

SPLC’s successes continue, and today include enforcing racial, gender, LGBT, children’s and voting rights, immigrant and economic justice, as well as criminal justice reform, and educating individuals and communities on how to fight hate.

Elizabeth Shanklin