Returning to Texas from a trip to the eastern shore of Maryland last spring, this writer (and her husband) visited several beautiful and historic places in the Deep South, among them Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; and Montgomery, Alabama.
In Montgomery, we visited the site where 42 year-old black seamstress Rosa Parks boarded a city bus on December 1, 1955 and refused to give up her seat to a white man when asked to do so. In those days blacks were expected to do this and move to the rear of the bus where they were thought to belong. We also visited the site where Mrs. Parks got off the bus and where she was arrested. About a year later, on November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled such segregation unconstitutional. The Rosa Parks incident was one, among several others, that sparked the American civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Also in Montgomery, we visited the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Founded in 1971 by lawyer Morris Dees, the Center’s goal was to ensure that the promise of the civil rights movement would become a reality for blacks and all Americans. By the time of its founding in the early 70s, some of the enthusiasm of the early civil rights movement had diminished, but the creation of the Center rekindled some of its zeal. Dees described the Center’s founding in his autobiography A Season for Justice: “I had made up my mind … I would … specialize in civil rights law. All the things in my life had brought me to this point [and]all the pulls and tugs of my conscience found a singular peace.” Civil rights activist Julian Bond became the Center’s first president.
One of SPLC’s most important endeavors is its Intelligence Project which identifies, monitors, and exposes extremist hate organizations currently present and active in the nation. Some of these white supremacist hate groups recently demonstrated their violence and hatred on August 11 and 12 in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The Center has taken legal action against some white supremacist organizations and has won judgments against 10 of them. In April 2017 it filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana against Andrew Anglin, the founder of a major neo-Nazi website, the Daily Stormer (a name taken from the Nazi propaganda tabloid Der Sturmer (1923–45)). Anglin, a key figure in the alt-right movement, is a Trump supporter and reportedly wrote the day after Trump’s election: “Our Glorious Leader has ascended to God Emperor. Make no mistake about it: we did this. If it were not for us, it wouldn’t have been possible.”
The suit alleges that Anglin launched a terror campaign against Tanya Gersh, a Jewish woman, her husband, and 12 year-old son by sending them more than 700 anti-Semitic messages and threats since December 2016, thus also violating the Montana Anti-Intimidation Act. Anglin and his ally Richard Spencer, head of the white nationalist National Policy Institute are prominent leaders of the alt-right movement. Both participated in the intimidation and harassment of Tanya Gersh’s family, and at one point, Anglin proposed an armed march on her Montana home. Although the march never materialized, he had promoted it with a picture of the Auschwitz concentration camp’s front gate.
As an antidote to this hate, SPLC launched its Teaching for Tolerance program in the 1990s to provide educators with anti-bias classroom material such as documentaries and lesson plans that promote tolerance. This preventive and proactive effort teaches elementary students the values of compassion and inclusion toward others, especially those who are different from them. SPLC has also produced a 15-minute video to be shown to police to help them recognize and respond promptly to hate crimes and afterwards to properly and quickly report them.
A 2013 study by the U.S. Department of Justice found that more than a quarter million Americans over the age of 12 are victims of hate crimes each year, although only about a third of these are reported to authorities. Hate crimes are not only traumatizing to the victim(s) but they have a wider negative impact on an entire community. These violent acts pose a threat to police officers in cities across the country and make residents edgy and fearful. This creates more fear and mistrust in communities which, in turn, causes more rude and bad behavior and reverberates in widening circles of mistrust, hate, and violence — like pebbles thrown into a pond.
Although we do not have the right to carelessly shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater, we do have the right, and obligation, to stand up respectfully and peacefully against prejudice and hate.
“If you remain seated,
If I remain seated,
Who will stand up?
If you stand up,
If I stand up,
Everyone will stand up.”
