Last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center announced it had fired co-founder and chief litigator Morris Dees. It’s still too early to tell exactly what led to the sudden end of the 82-year-old’s five-decade tenure, but the news puts a unique spotlight on the SPLC itself.

Even though it still wields outsized influence over powerful corporations like Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Twitter — and, alarmingly, even some elected officials — today’s SPLC bears little resemblance to the group Dees founded nearly 50 years ago.