The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation.

[7][8] Since the 2000s, the SPLC's classification and listings of hate groups (organizations that "attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics") and anti-government extremists have been widely relied upon by academic and media sources.

Dees asked civil rights leader Julian Bond to serve as president, a largely honorary position; he resigned in 1979 but remained on the board of directors until his death in 2015.

[18] According to a 1996 article in The New York Times, Dees and the SPLC "have been credited with devising innovative legal ways to cripple hate groups, including seizing their assets.

[21] In 1995, the Montgomery Advertiser won a Pulitzer Prize recognition for work that probed management self-interest, questionable practices, and employee racial discrimination allegations in the SPLC.

"[35][36][37] Following the dismissal, a letter signed by two dozen SPLC employees was sent to management, expressing concern that "allegations of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism threaten the moral authority of this organization and our integrity along with it.

[32] Huang replaced Karen Baynes-Dunning, a former juvenile court judge, who had served as interim president and CEO since April 2019, after founder Morris Dees was fired in March 2019.

[31] The SPLC had appointed Tina Tchen, a former chief of staff for former first lady Michelle Obama, to review and investigate any issues with the organization's workplace environment related to Dees' firing.

Starting in 1974, the SPLC set aside money for its endowment stating that it was "convinced that the day [would] come when non-profit groups [would] no longer be able to rely on support through mail because of posting and printing costs".

[45] As of 2023[update], SPLC has earned the GuideStar Gold Seal of Transparency,[46] which is given to organizations that voluntarily share their financials and "highlight their commitment to inclusivity to gain funders' trust and support.

[53] In February 1985, Klansmen Joe M. Garner and Roy T. Downs Jr., along with Klan sympathizer Charles Bailey, pleaded guilty to conspiring to intimidate, oppress and threaten members of black organizations represented by SPLC.

[63] In 1981, the SPLC took Ku Klux Klan leader Louis Beam's Klan-associated militia, the Texas Emergency Reserve (TER),[65] to court to stop racial harassment and intimidation of Vietnamese shrimpers in and around Galveston Bay.

[70] McDonald eventually found the TER and Beam liable for tortious interference, violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and of various civil rights statutes and thus permanently enjoined them against violence, threatening behavior, and other harassment of the Vietnamese shrimpers.

[84][needs update] In May 1991, Harold Mansfield, a black U.S. Navy war veteran, was murdered by George Loeb, a member of the neo-Nazi "Church of the Creator" (now called the Creativity Movement).

[5] The lawsuit stemmed from the July 1998 attack when security guards at the Aryan Nations compound near Hayden Lake in northern Idaho, shot at Victoria Keenan and her son.

[96] Neither men had "substantial assets" so Nethercott's 70-acre (280,000 m2) ranch—Camp Thunderbird—which had also served as Ranch Rescue's headquarters—was seized to pay the judgment and surrendered to the two illegal immigrants from El Salvador, Edwin Alfredo Mancía Gonzáles and Fátima del Socorro Leiva Medina.

[73]: 4 [97] The SPLC brought a civil suit on behalf of Billy Ray Johnson, a black, mentally disabled man, who was severely beaten by four white males in Texas and left bleeding in a ditch, suffering permanent injuries.

As a result, the victim received "two cracked ribs, a broken left forearm, multiple cuts and bruises and jaw injuries requiring extensive dental repair.

[107] Also with the ACLU Prison Project, the SPLC filed a class-action suit in May 2013 against Management and Training Corporation (MTC), the for-profit operator of the private East Mississippi Correctional Facility, and the MDC.

[121] In October 2016, the SPLC published its "Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists",[122] which listed the British activist Maajid Nawaz and a nonprofit group he founded, the Quilliam Foundation.

The article argued that the dissemination of conspiracy theories around such issues as the Syrian Civil War (about the White Helmets and child refugees) were intended to co-opt leftist anti-imperialism in the service of a fascist agenda.

[168] Mark Potok of Southern Poverty Law Center responded that Wilcox "had an ax to grind for a great many years" and engaged in name calling against others doing anti-racist work.

In the wake of the shooting, the SPLC was again criticized for listing FRC as an anti-gay hate group, including by liberal columnist Dana Milbank,[175] while others defended the categorization.

[178] The report described how Dylann Roof, the perpetrator of the June 17, 2015, Charleston church shooting had written in his manifesto about his 2012 Google search for "black-on-white crime", which led him to be convinced that black men were a "physical threat to white people".

[189] In a November 2018 briefing of law enforcement officials in Clark County, Washington, concerning the Proud Boys FBI agents suggested the use of various websites for more information, including that of the SPLC.

[202] The series was nominated as one of three finalists for a 1995 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism for "its probe of questionable management practices and self-interest at the Southern Poverty Law Center, the nation's best-endowed civil rights charity.

"[203] According to the series, the SPLC had exaggerated the threat posed by the Klan and similar groups in order to raise money, discriminated against black employees, and used misleading fundraising tactics.

[4]: 1500 [Notes 2] The National Geographic Channel television series included the 2008 episode entitled "Inside American Terror", which covered the SPLC's successful lawsuit against the Ku Klux Klan.

', sociologists Betty A. Dobratz and Stephanie L. Shanks-Meile said that the SPLC's Klanwatch Intelligence Reports portrayed the KKK as more "militant and dangerous with higher turnouts" than what they personally had observed.

[16] The English Wikipedia community considers the Southern Poverty Law Center to be "generally reliable on topics related to hate groups and extremism in the United States", but notes that it is "biased" and should be attributed.