J. Richard Cohen | |
|---|---|
 Cohen in 2017 | |
| Born | Richmond, Virginia, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Columbia University (BA) University of Virginia (JD) |
| Occupation | Civil rights lawyer |
| Known for | Former president of the Southern Poverty Law Center |
J. Richard Cohen is an American attorney who was the president and chief executive officer of the Southern Poverty Law Center from 1986 to 2019. [1] [2]
Cohen was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia to a Jewish family. His father ran an interior decorating firm and his mother was a legal secretary. When crosstown busing came to Richmond, he persuaded his parents to let him attend a public school as opposed to a private school, and Cohen left high school one year early to attend Columbia University. He graduated from Columbia University in 1976 and the University of Virginia School of Law in 1979. [3] He studied under Raymond Geuss and Arthur Danto at Columbia. [4]
Cohen's upbringing in the South influenced his trajectory as a civil rights lawyer. [5] After law school, Cohen practiced law in Washington, D.C., with Charles Morgan Jr. for seven years. In 1986, at the urging of Morris Dees, he moved to Montgomery, Alabama and became the legal director of the SPLC. Two months after he joined SPLC, he was asked to defend a case in front of the Supreme Court of the United States, in which the Justice Department wanted the court to reverse a lower court order requiring Alabama state troopers to promote one black trooper for each white trooper promoted. [2]
As general counsel, Cohen subsequently litigated against various white supremacist groups as well as lawsuits defending civil rights. [3] In 1997, Cohen was named by The American Lawyer as one of 45 public sector lawyers "whose vision and commitment are changing lives." He was also a finalist for the national Trial Lawyer of the Year Award for his work on the Macedonia Baptist Church arson lawsuit. [6]
In 2003 he became president of the SPLC. [7] Cohen stepped down in 2019 with the ousting of Dees. [8] [9]
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white supremacist groups, for its classification of hate groups and other extremist organizations, and for promoting tolerance education programs. The SPLC was founded by Morris Dees, Joseph J. Levin Jr., and Julian Bond in 1971 as a civil rights law firm in Montgomery.
Mary Louise Ware is an African-American civil rights activist. She was arrested in October 1955 at the age of 18 in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her seat on the segregated bus system. She is one of several women who were arrested for this offense prior to Rosa Parks that year. Parks was the figure around whom the Montgomery bus boycott was organized, starting December 5, 1955.
Morris Seligman Dees Jr. is an American attorney known as the co-founder and former chief trial counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), based in Montgomery, Alabama. He ran a direct marketing firm before founding SPLC. Along with his law partner, Joseph J. Levin Jr., Dees founded the SPLC in 1971. Dees and his colleagues at the SPLC have been "credited with devising innovative ways to cripple hate groups" such as the Ku Klux Klan, particularly by using "damage litigation".
Liberty Counsel is a 501(c)(3) Christian ministry that engages in strategic litigation to promote evangelical Christian values. Liberty Counsel was founded in 1989 by its chairman Mathew Staver and its president Anita L. Staver, who are attorneys and married to each other. The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed Liberty Counsel as an anti-LGBT hate group, a designation the group has disputed. The group is a Christian ministry.
The Southern Legal Resource Center, Inc. (SLRC) is a South Carolina non-profit public law corporation which offers legal support to defend what they see as First Amendment violations, violation of civil rights, or “discrimination against advocates of southern heritage”.
The National Policy Institute (NPI) was a white supremacist think tank and lobbying group based in Alexandria, Virginia. It lobbied for white supremacists and the alt-right. Its president was Richard B. Spencer.
Browder v. Gayle, 142 F. Supp. 707 (1956), was a case heard before a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama on Montgomery and Alabama state bus segregation laws. The panel consisted of Middle District of Alabama Judge Frank Minis Johnson, Northern District of Alabama Judge Seybourn Harris Lynne, and Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Rives. The main plaintiffs in the case were Aurelia Browder, Claudette Colvin, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith. Jeanetta Reese had originally been a plaintiff in the case, but intimidation by segregationists caused her to withdraw in February. She falsely claimed she had not agreed to the lawsuit, which led to an unsuccessful attempt to disbar Fred Gray for supposedly improperly representing her.
Fred David Gray is an American civil rights attorney, preacher, activist, and state legislator from Alabama. He handled many prominent civil rights cases, such as Browder v. Gayle, and was elected to the Alabama House of Representatives in 1970, along with Thomas Reed, both from Tuskegee. They were the first black state legislators in Alabama in the 20th century. He served as the president of the National Bar Association in 1985, and in 2001 was elected as the first African-American President of the Alabama State Bar.
John Lawrence Carroll was an American judge and academic administrator who was a U.S. magistrate judge for the Middle District of Alabama from 1986 to 2001. He was also a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States's Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. He served as the dean of the Cumberland School of Law in Homewood, Alabama, from 2001 to 2014.
Spottswood William Robinson III was an American civil rights lawyer, jurist, and educator who served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1966 to 1989. He previously served as a U.S. district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia from 1964 to 1966.
Jimmie Lee Jackson was an African American civil rights activist in Marion, Alabama, and a deacon in the Baptist church. On February 18, 1965, while unarmed and participating in a peaceful voting rights march in his city, he was beaten by troopers and fatally shot by an Alabama state trooper. Jackson died eight days later in the hospital.
Edward Earl Carnes is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
The United Klans of America Inc. (UKA), based in Alabama, is a Ku Klux Klan organization active in the United States. Led by Robert Shelton, the UKA peaked in membership in the late 1960s and 1970s, and it was the most violent Klan organization of its time. Its headquarters was the Anglo-Saxon Club outside Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
The Student Press Law Center (SPLC) is a non-profit organization that aims to promote, support and defend press freedom rights for student journalists at high schools and colleges in the United States. It is dedicated to student free-press rights and provides information, advice and legal assistance at no charge for students and educators.
The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is a socially conservative advocacy group of pediatricians and other healthcare professionals in the United States, founded in 2002. The group advocates against abortion rights and rights for LGBT people, and promotes conversion therapy. As of 2022, its membership has been reported at about 700 physicians.
This is a timeline of the civil rights movement in the United States, a nonviolent mid-20th century freedom movement to gain legal equality and the enforcement of constitutional rights for people of color. The goals of the movement included securing equal protection under the law, ending legally institutionalized racial discrimination, and gaining equal access to public facilities, education reform, fair housing, and the ability to vote.
D. James Kennedy Ministries (DJKM), formerly “Coral Ridge Ministries,” is an evangelical Christian media outreach founded by minister and evangelist D. James Kennedy in 1974. The group is listed as an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) due to statements and positions which the SPLC describes as falsely demeaning gay and lesbian people.
Margaret L. Huang is an American human rights and racial justice advocate, and president and chief executive officer of Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an American civil rights nonprofit. She joined the organization in April 2020, taking over a position held for several decades by founder Morris Dees.
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