(born 1936) In 1967 Dees founded the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery Alabama, guiding it for years despite arson and death threats. Victories against segregation at the Montgomery YMCA (1969) and in the Alabama State Police led to nationwide work against race and gender discrimination and brutality in prisons, for fair housing, fair medical care, worker rights and safety and just taxation. Since 1980, Dees and the Center have fought organized hate groups. An education program called “Teaching Tolerance” discourages the spread of hate, while legal victories, establishing that hate groups can be held collectively responsible for hate crimes committed by individual members, have bankrupted the Alabama Ku Klux Klan (1981) and the White Aryan Resistance Movement (1991).