AL Political Reporter: “For the past 50 years, the Southern Poverty Law Center has fought to ensure equality for people of color.
On Friday evening, the organization celebrated its 50th anniversary by hosting an event focused on its course for the next 50 years.
SPLC co-founder Joe Levin Jr. said as a kid in Alabama he knew “nothing but Jim Crow segregation.”
“Witnessing the cruelty of institutional racial injustice and the violence of vigilante groups, particularly the Ku Klux Klan, is what inspired the founding of the Southern Poverty Law Center in the 1970s,” Levin said. “It’s surprising and deeply saddening to see that over 50 years later, hate and injustice remain significant forces in our lives. Arguably, in recent years, we’ve regressed to an era when hate does not manifest sparsely. It is open and it is extensive.””