Civil rights and diversity speaker Morris Dees is the co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit group specializing in lawsuits involving civil rights violations, domestic terrorism, and hate-motivated crimes. Dees and his associates have successfully battled and dismantled a series of hate groups, including the Aryan Nation and Ku Klux Klan, and have secured huge criminal, civil, and financial judgments against them.

Morris Dees is a strong proponent of education about civil rights and the civil rights movement, and was instrumental in the creation of the Civil Rights Memorial in Mobile, Alabama. For his efforts as an attorney and activist, Dees was named the Trial Lawyer of the Year in 1987 by the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice and received the National Education Association's Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Award in 1990. Most recently in 2012, Dees received the highest award from the American Bar Association, the ABA Medal which recognizes exceptionally distinguished service by a lawyer to the cause of American jurisprudence.

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