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Twenty-five years ago this month, in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 1988, a group of racist skinheads assaulted Ethiopian college student Mulugeta Seraw on the street in Portland, Ore. Seraw was savagely beaten – hit with a baseball bat and kicked with steel-toe boots. He died from his wounds.

On behalf of Seraw’s family, the ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ sued the skinheads responsible for the murder and also Tom Metzger, a notorious California neo-Nazi who founded the White Aryan Resistance (WAR) and recruited the skinheads who killed Seraw into  his white supremacist organization.

The lawsuit resulted in a $12.5 million jury verdict that decimated WAR.

Portland lawyer Elden Rosenthal served as the ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½â€™s co-counsel in the case, with ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ founder Morris Dees, and now serves on its board of directors. He recently spoke to Oregon Public Radio about the experience and what it meant to his city. .

Read more below about one of the ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½â€™s most famous cases:

Portland Honors Man Whose Murder Sparked ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Lawsuit: The city of Portland has honored an Ethiopian student whose brutal murder sparked the ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ lawsuit that destroyed the White Aryan Resistance.

Hate Trial Brings Victim’s Son and Crusading Lawyer Together:  A trial united a victim's son and a lawyer - and changed the course of their lives.

Tom Metzger: An in-depth profile of one of the most notorious living white supremacists in the United States, a former California grand dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan who, in the mid-1980s, founded White Aryan Resistance.  

Berhanu v. Metzger: A brief synopsis of the case, along with the ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ complaint and the court’s judgment.