Morris Dees to speak at Rice University commencement

CONTACT: Margot Dimond
PHONE:
(713) 348-6775
EMAIL: mdimond@rice.edu

MORRIS DEES TO SPEAK AT RICE UNIVERSITY
COMMENCEMENT

Civil rights
attorney Morris Dees will deliver the address to graduating students at the
Class of 2001 Commencement at Rice University on Saturday, May 12.

Commencement ceremonies
will start at 8:30 a.m. in the Academic Quadrangle. In case of inclement weather
graduation ceremonies will be held at Autry Court in the Rice gym.

The Class of 2001 will
be the 88th graduating class in Rice’s history.

In addition to the
awarding of degrees, commencement weekend festivities will include the Class of
2001 Convocation, the Shepherd School of Music Presidential Concert, and a
presidential reception for students, guests faculty, staff and administration.
All of these events will be held in Alice Pratt Brown Hall on Friday, May 11,
followed by a fireworks show in the stadium parking lot starting at 10:15
p.m.

The Student Art
Exhibition in the Rice University Art Gallery in Sewall Hall will be on display
11 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday, May 11, and from 11 a.m. — 2 p.m. on Saturday, May
12.

Born in Shorter,
Alabama, Morris Dees has devoted much of his life to civil rights. As chief
trial counsel at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Montgomery-based nonprofit
group he founded in 1971, Dees has specialized in lawsuits involving civil
rights violations and racially motivated crimes.

Dees won a landmark
trial Sept. 7 when a jury awarded $6.3 million to a woman and her son, ruling
that white supremacist leader Richard Butler was negligent in letting guards
from his Aryan Nations compound chase down and shoot at Victoria Keenan and her
son, Jason, in 1998.

The case was the latest
of many landmark trials that Dees has won. In 1990, he won a $12.5 million
verdict for the family of an Ethiopian man beaten to death by a group of
skinheads in Portland, Ore. Last year, Dees won a $37.8 million verdict against
the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan for the burning of the Macedonia
Baptist Church in South Carolina.

Dees turned to his
crusade for civil rights after selling a successful publishing company that he
founded after graduating from the University of Alabama School of Law in
1961.

Dees is the author of
“Gathering Storm: America’s Militia Threat,” “Hate on Trial: The Case Against
America’s Most Dangerous Neo-Nazi,” and “Season of Justice,” an autobiography. A
made-for-television movie about his life, “Line of Fire,” aired on NBC in 1991,
and he was portrayed in the 1996 movie “Ghosts of Mississippi” about the life of
slain civil rights worker Medgar Evers.

Dees pushed for the
construction of the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery. Designed by Maya Lin,
who also designed the U.S. Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., the
Civil Rights Memorial bears the names of 40 men, women and children who lost
their lives during the civil rights movement.

Editors Note:
Please notify Margot Dimond at (713) 348-6775 or B.J. Almond at (713) 348-6770
in the Office of Media Relations and Information of your plans to attend by May
11. Guidelines for commencement coverage and parking passes are available
through this office.

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