Editing Southern Poverty Law Center (section)

===''Brown v. Invisible Empire, KKK'' (1980)===
In 1979, the Klan began a summer of attacks against civil rights groups, beginning in Alabama. In [[Decatur, Alabama]], Klan members clashed with a group of civil rights marchers. There were a hundred Klan members carrying "bats, ax handles and guns". A black woman, Bernice Brown, was shot and other marchers were violently attacked. In ''Brown v. Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan'', filed in 1980 in the USDC Northern District of Alabama, the SPLC sued the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan on behalf of plaintiffs, Brown and other black marchers.<ref name="SPLC_Brown_1980">{{cite web |url=https://www.splcenter.org/seeking-justice/case-docket/brown-v-invisible-empire-knights-ku-klux-klan |title=Brown v. Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan |work=SPLC |access-date=June 22, 2020 |date=1980 |archive-date=June 23, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200623054045/https://www.splcenter.org/seeking-justice/case-docket/brown-v-invisible-empire-knights-ku-klux-klan |url-status=live }}</ref> The civil suit  was settled in 1990 and "required Klansmen to pay damages, perform community service, and refrain from white supremacist activity."<ref name="SPLC_Brown_1980"/> Chalmers wrote in ''Backfire'', that the Klan had been in serious decline since the end of the 1970s. He described the "Klan summer of 1979",<ref name="WaPo_19790623">{{Cite news| issn = 0190-8286| title = Night in Alabama With the Ku Klux Klan| newspaper = [[The Washington Post]]| access-date = June 23, 2020| date = August 26, 1979| url = https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1979/08/26/night-in-alabama-with-the-ku-klux-klan/6b2d7fd9-60b6-438e-a7f7-45522d03fc99/| archive-date = June 28, 2020| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200628161654/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1979/08/26/night-in-alabama-with-the-ku-klux-klan/6b2d7fd9-60b6-438e-a7f7-45522d03fc99/| url-status = live}}</ref> as a "catastrophe" for the Klan, as the SPLC's newly established Klanwatch, which became a "powerful weapon" that "tracked and litigated" the Klan.<ref name="Chalmers_Backfire_2003"/>{{rp|112}} According to Chalmers, "[b]eginning with the Decatur street confrontation, the SPLC's Klanwatch began suing various Klans in federal court for civil rights violations", and as a result, the Klan lost credibility and its resources were depleted.<ref name="Chalmers_Backfire_2003"/>{{rp|112}} <ref group="Notes">In his 2003 publication, Chalmers warned that the Klan had given way to the next generation of hate groups.</ref> As a result of the SPLC, the FBI reopen their case against the Klan, and "nine Klansmen were eventually convicted of criminal charges" related to the Decatur confrontation of 1979.<ref name="SPLC_Brown_1980"/>