With $52 million in reserves and an $8,000 wall sculpture in the lobby, Morris Dees' Southern Poverty Law Center is sometimes referred to as the "Poverty Palace." Indeed, like Mr. Dees, the center has its share of contradictions.
SOUTHERN - The center 's major programs are no longer Southern; they are nationwide
POVERTY - The center's focus for the 90s has little to do with poverty; its Teaching Tolerance project supplies public schools with videotapes and other teaching aids designed to teach racial and cultural tolerance. As for its own finances, the nation's wealthiest civil rights charity took in an average of $31,348 a day in 1993 and pays three of its officers more than $100,000 a year.
LAW - in the past four years, the center has filed only seven lawsuits. 
Mr. Dees says he's considering changing the name of the Southern Poverty Law Center but he notes, "People know us as the Law Center and for the time being were just going to keep the name that we have. It would get too confusing to people who know us, our supporters."

Sources:Internal Revenue Service records and Law Center officials.