Closer to the Promised Land

Civil rights attorney Morris Dees said the election of Barack Obama gives the nation "a front row seat to history."

The nation's foremost crusader against hate groups warned that minorities still face intolerance but predicted that the United States would eventually realize the dream of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and achieve racial and economic equality.

In a speech at NC State marking the national holiday in King's honor, civil rights attorney Morris Dees praised King for his courage and leadership.

"He had to face rivals with no foresight, politicians with no backbone and finally, a terrorist with no conscience," Dees said.

Dees, who founded the Southern Poverty Law Center in 1971, is a study in courage himself. His offices were firebombed by members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1983 and more than 30 people have been prosecuted for plots to kill him since then. Dees and the nonprofit legal center won a $7 million judgment on behalf of the mother of a lynching victim in 1987, bankrupting the United Klans of America. More than a dozen other hate groups and their leaders have been financially crippled as a result of the center's lawsuits, including white supremacist Tom Metzger and the White Aryan Resistance.

The threats against Dees are real; people attending Wednesday's speech in Stewart Theatre were asked to open their purses and backpacks for inspection by security personnel, a stark reminder that even on the eve of the inauguration of Barack Obama, racial equality can be a dangerous issue to champion.

Speaking to a crowd of several hundred, Dees said Obama's election represented a great step forward in the struggle for civil rights, on par with the abolition of slavery after the Civil War and the repeal of segregationist Jim Crow laws in the 1960s.

"Dr. King said he'd been to the promised land," Dees said, referencing a statement King made the night before he was killed. "Today, 40 years after he left us, a new generation is taking over and bringing us to the edge of the river. Each of us has a front row seat to history.

"The day that Dr. King and Rosa Parks and so many others worked for is coming. The march for justice continues."

Dees said prejudice against racial minorities has not been eliminated, despite the legal and social gains made over the past four decades. He pointed to a University of Chicago study that found job applicants with names that sounded Hispanic or African-American were 50 percent less likely to be called in for an interview than applicants with Anglo sounding names – even though their qualifications were the same.

"The challenge we face is systemic, built-in bias and prejudice," he said.

Dees also said the cause of civil rights had grown since King's time, now encompassing gays and lesbians, the poor, and immigrants, among others.

"When we build bridges across the divides, they will be built out of love and understanding and acceptance of those who are different," he said. "There's still a lot of work to be done."

Dees' speech was co-sponsored by NC State's African-American Cultural Center and the Union Activities Board's Black Students Board. 

Links:

• Student to Attend Obama Inauguration

• Diversity at NC State

• Southern Povery Law Center