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2008 Day of Equality - Evening Events

Saturday, September 20, 2008
The Doubletree Hotel
808 Twentieth Street South
Birmingham, AL 35205

Cocktail Social & Silent Auction
5:00 PM – 6:30 PM

Awards Banquet
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Youth Party

 

AWARDS BANQUET
Keynote Speaker: Richard Cohen, President and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center
A graduate of Columbia University and the University of Virginia School of Law, Cohen came to the Center as its legal director and now serves as its president and chief executive officer. He and Morris Dees have formed a dynamic trial team, winning a series of landmark lawsuits against some of the nation’s major hate groups. Cohen also successfully litigated a wide variety of important civil right actions—defending the rights of prisoners to be treated humanely, working for equal educational opportunities for all children and bringing down the Confederate battle flag from the top of the Alabama State Capitol.

In 1997, the national legal magazine The American Lawyer selected Cohen as one of 45 young public sector lawyers “whose vision and commitment are changing lives.” In 1999, he was a finalist for the National Trial Lawyer of the Year Award for his work on Macedonia Baptist Church v. Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a lawsuit that ended with a record $37.8 million judgment against a Klan group for its role in the burning of a South Carolina church.

Cohen also has been a creative force behind some of the Center’s most successful education projects. He has served as executive producer for six documentary films created for the Center’s Teaching Tolerance program. Four of those films were nominated for Academy Awards, and two—“Mighty Times: The Children’s March” in 2005 and “A Time for Justice” in 1994—won Oscars.

Since being named Center president in 2003, Cohen has dedicated himself to continuing the organization's tradition of working tirelessly for those who have no other champions. Under his leadership, the Center established the Immigrant Justice Project in 2004, opened a Mississippi office in 2005 and expanded the organization's work to reform the juvenile justice systems in Southern states. “Our highest calling is representing those who have no voice and who fall through the cracks in our society,” he said.

Cohen says one of his most meaningful cases was a lawsuit the Center brought on behalf of the wife and six children of a black man who died in police custody in Hemphill, Texas. After the lawmen were acquitted of murder charges by a hometown jury, they sued Cohen and Dees for suing them. Cohen managed to turn the tables on the lawmen, winning a substantial monetary settlement for the family and collecting evidence later used by prosecutors to convict the police officers on criminal civil rights charges.

“The case taught me an important lesson,” Cohen said. “Justice is not something that’s inevitable. It’s often denied to those who are poor or unpopular. Justice prevails only when dedicated people are willing to fight for it. That’s what we do every day at the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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