Morris Dees brought a message of unity to campus Thursday. He also brought protests from a group preaching a message of division (literally).
Dees, who co-founded the Southern Poverty Law Center in 1971, has spent a large part of his life in opposition to groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White Aryan Resistance. The protests he drew Thursday night from the League of the South, a group that preaches the peaceful secession of the South from the United States, are small potatoes compared to the juggernauts of domestic terrorism he’s taken on in the past.
We don’t believe the League of the South, a seemingly peaceful organization, should be lumped in with truly sinister organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, but their opposition nicely illustrates Dees’ bravery in spreading his message. It also illustrates the university’s bravery in bringing someone like Dees to speak to its faculty and students.
The university didn’t shy away from bringing a controversial figure like Dees to speak, and the decision paid off. Dees’ message was open and honest. He thoroughly answered questions from anyone who wanted to ask them.
Dees, a lifelong Alabama resident who grew up on his family’s farm, said matter-of-factly that he accepted segregation when he was young. “I grew up on a cotton farm and nobody thought anything different,” he said.
What’s important is that Dees realized the ridiculousness of such an institution at an early age and had the courage to devote his life to changing what he thought was wrong, even when it was dangerous and unpopular to do so.
Whether the League of the South protested the Dees event because he has an “anti-Christian” agenda, as they claim, or because he opposes the secession of his home state from the Union, Mississippi State would have missed hearing an invaluable message if he hadn’t come.
The Reflector editorial board is made up of opinion editor Angela Adair, news editor Elizabeth Crisp, assistant news editor Jed Pressgrove sports editor Jeff Edwards, entertainment editor Dustin Barnes, managing editor Pam McTeer and editor in chief Josh Foreman.