LEWISTON – After slavery was abolished, women got the vote and civil rights laws passed, but injustice didn’t end in the United States, Morris Dees said.

He should know.

Dees is founder and chief trial attorney of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama. Speaking at Bates College Chapel on Thursday, he said there is a continued need for justice.

Renowned for bringing lawsuits against infamous hate groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, Dees has been recognized for his decades of work in the courts in the fight for equality and tolerance.

He was the latest speaker in the college’s ongoing series, Presidential Symposium 2008.

“The march for justice continues today,” Dees said. Although no longer legally sanctioned, racism exists in American society; less overt but still destructive.

A recent study found that employers turned away applications by job-seekers half the time simply because their names sounded African-American, he said. Sometimes prejudice is so ingrained, those who discriminate might not even realize their bias.

There has been progress, but there is need for more, he said.

Dees told the story of his fight on behalf of Vietnamese refugees in Texas who were threatened to stay out of the shrimping business. He went to federal court and secured an injunction against other shrimpers who sought to force the immigrants out.

At first, the Vietnamese were reluctant to defy the other fishermen, who had burned the refugees’ boats.

Then Dees spoke at one of their church services, sharing Martin Luther King’s struggles and imploring them to stand up for their rights.

“America is a nation of laws,” he told them. They agreed to let him pursue the court injunction, which he won.

Later, he was at the docks for the blessing of the boats. The new shrimpers were motoring out to sea. “Their families were standing there watching their loved ones find a place at America’s table,” he said.

As the fog lifted, he could see that federal marshals had stationed themselves at the waterfront to enforce the court order.

“I not only felt proud to be their lawyer,” he said of the refugees. “I felt proud to be an American.”

When people see injustices, they should take action, he said.

A Jewish boy in Billings, Mont., proudly put his menorah in the window of his home, Dees said. Then somebody threw a brick through that window.

When the town learned of the deed, townspeople put cardboard cutouts of menorahs in their windows, he said. As the boy walked through the town, he turned to his mother and said, “Mom, I didn’t know there were so many Jews in Billings.”

She said, “No, son. They’re our friends.”