The SLRC was founded in 1995 by a group of four attorneys: Carl A. Barrington (deceased), Kirk David Lyons, Larry Norman, and Lourie A. Salley III.
Under McCredie the organization doubled the size of its board of directors, increased its advertising program and undertook an ambitious five-year growth and development plan.
Federal judges have shown almost universal hostility to legal protection for "Confederate Southern Americans," but Lyons and the SLRC still advocate for clients claiming an increase in the number of job-related persecution of "Confederate Southern Americans" and a paucity of legal protection in the workplace save for cases that come under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The SLRC has drawn fire from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has frequently attacked the SLRC by citing Lyons' pre-SLRC defense of some controversial right-wing figures such as Aryan Nations members, White Aryan Resistance founder Tom Metzger[4] and Lyons' 1990 marriage to the sister of jailed Order defendant David Tate.
[citation needed] The SLRC called on "Confederate Southern Americans" to identify as a separate race on the 2010 United States Census form.