A New Era: SPLC launches innovative, inclusive and distinctive visual brand
I am delighted to share that the Southern Poverty Law Center has launched a new visual brand that centers communities in the South and honors our legacy of defending civil rights.
Since 1971, the SPLC has worked to ensure the promise of equal justice by taking on the most hateful factions in the South and meeting extremism with vigilance, resilience and courage. And today, more than 50 years after our doors first opened, there is an opportunity – and an urgent need – for transformative change. We are ready to seize it.
Rooted in the Deep South, centered in racial equity and grounded in civil rights history, the SPLC is beginning a new era of work to build power for multiracial, inclusive democracy and reverse the tide of white nationalism.
Our new brand identity honors our enduring legacy fighting in the courts for justice in the South. It also creates space to celebrate our many other strengths, center Black and Brown voices, forge deep alliances and partnerships in communities, and invest in innovative, community-led solutions for dismantling white supremacy and protecting human rights.
A scene from the Selma-to-Montgomery March in March 1965.
James Karales
Early SPLC staff members gather with SPLC co-founder Joseph J. Levin Jr., front, to hear news of a Supreme Court reapportionment ruling. From left: Michael Fidlow, Jo Brazell, Dave Watson, Mamie Goldsmith, SPLC President Julian Bond, Beverly Hughes and Jackie Alexander.
SPLC
Maya Lin stands on the upper level of the SPLC’s Civil Rights Memorial during the dedication ceremony in 1989. She envisioned the plaza as a place “to appreciate how far the country has come in its quest for equality, and to consider how far it has to go.”
Thomas S. England/Getty Images
The SPLC has filed numerous lawsuits to stop the exploitation of farm workers and other migrants. Women working in agriculture and food processing faced particular hardships, often enduring sexual harassment and violence on the job.
David Bacon
A rally in Montgomery, Alabama, protests the state’s HB 56, an anti-immigrant law enacted in 2011 that granted police the authority to demand documentation demonstrating citizenship or legal status during routine traffic stops. A settlement in October 2013 blocked the law’s most egregious provisions
Sarah P. Reynolds
Rosemary McCoy and Sheila Singleton created the Harriet Tubman Freedom Fighters Corp., which focuses on economic justice, voter education and civic engagement.
Octavian Cantilli
A 2007 rally in support of the Jena Six, a group of Black high school students in Jena, Louisiana, who had faced charges of attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate.
Dave Martin
In 2017, the SPLC filed suit on behalf of Tanya Gersh, a Jewish woman being harassed by a neo-Nazi leader with antisemitic threats. A federal judge ruled that the neo-Nazi must pay $14 million in damages to Gersh.
Burton ProductionsWe also wanted to keep the focus on our home in the South and ensure that our visual brand felt distinctive and more inclusive. The new brand identity brings this vision to life. Our new logo uses our widely recognized abbreviation, and we also widened our color palette to celebrate the breadth of stories and experiences in the South. Our websites, emails, social media presence and other visual markers have now officially changed to reflect the new brand.
Looking to the future, the SPLC will embrace, more fully than ever, our charge to be a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond. And it is thanks to your generous partnership, support and friendship that we are inspired and ready to launch this new era of our work – an era of strengthening democracy, relegating white supremacy out of the mainstream, decarcerating and decriminalizing communities of color and eradicating poverty.
Together, let’s continue writing our shared story: the story of our resistance, our fierce activism and our demand for a better world.
Image at top: The SPLC’s new brand identity widens its color palette in celebration of the breadth of stories and experiences in the South.
