Despite arriving nearly 45 minutes late because of bad weather, a Georgia lawyer delivered a speech filled with stories of events that have constituted anger, fear and frustration in this country.

Morris Dees’ speech, “Teaching Tolerance,” was the first in a series called Civil Discourse in a Democracy by the Institute of National Affairs, which more than 100 attended.

Dees is a lawyer who is the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit group that specializes in lawsuits involving civil rights violations and racially motivated crimes. He also won the 1995 Academy Award for Best Short Documentary for his film, A Time for Justice.

“National and political leaders promote fear and intolerance,” he said. “This country is deeply divided along many lines.”

Nothing, Dees said, makes this more clear than the O.J. Simpson trial. He said 75 percent of blacks believe O.J. is not guilty and 70 percent of non-blacks believe O.J. is guilty.

“Primary weapons used are not words, but bombs.”

He said this is illustrated by the recent bombs in Atlanta, Oklahoma City and New York.

Dees also talked about two white supremacists he took to court and the crimes for which they were punished.

He represented an Ethiopian family whose oldest son, 24, was studying and working in Portland, Ore.

“[The family] had heard America was a great land of opportunity,” Dees said. The man believed if he worked hard and was a law-abiding citizen, things would go well.

Then Tom, a member of the white Aryan resistance movement, which was the coordinating group of all the Skinheads in the nation, organized three Skinheads who beat the young Ethiopian by hitting the back of his head with an aluminum baseball bat. He died in the streets of Portland.

Dees filed a lawsuit against Tom, and his followers testified against him. Tom defended himself and, according to Dees, said to the jury, “I think America is great because of the contributions of white people.”

“I wondered what I could say. I stood there in front of that jury,” Dees said. “I heard I want you to look out at [Ethiopian family]. If we lived in Tom’s America, we wouldn’t have the brilliance of Martin Luther King, Jr., Gen. Colin Powell [and other notable minority Americans]. The America Tom believed in is an America that never existed,” he said.

“If America is so great because of our diversity, then why can’t we all get along? This country is deeply divided. That has destroyed our civility,” Dees said.

He then talked about a black woman whose son was hanged by the Ku Klux Klan. In the late 1980s the group was following a trial in Montgomery, Ala. of a black man charged of killing a white police officer.

Klan members were advised to kill the first black man they saw if the verdict was guilty. However, the jury was deadlocked.

Nevertheless, Klan members went to the streets and killed Michael Donald, 19, a hard-working, college student.

Dees said it took four years for the FBI to crack the case and the perpetrator who orchestrated the crime received a life sentence.

Dees sued the other Klan members in 1991 and won.

“I thought we showed through many witnesses that this Klan group carried its policies through violence,” he said.

“In [my] years as a lawyer, we have more in common than [what] separates us,” Dees said. “We don’t have a perfect system of justice, but we have one the best in the world.”