In 1986 Jeff Sessions was the Attorney General of the state of Alabama and was soon to be nominated by President Ronald Reagan for a Federal Judgeship. During those hearings he was accused of calling a black assistant Federal Prosecutor boy on numerous occasions as well as telling another assistant black Federal Prosecutor that he should watch what he says around whites. This is the South. Mr. Sessions during those confirmation hearings was asked about his support for the Klu Klux Klan: As is written testimony he been quoted as supporting the Klan until he was informed they smoked pot. He was never confirmed as a Federal District judge for the Southern District of Alabama.
Mr. Sessions problems with race didn't end with his denial of a federal judgeship.
But there are substantive reasons that Sessions, who was Alabama’s attorney general and is now a U.S. senator, is taking heat on civil rights. He supported gutting the Voting Rights Act in 2013. He has a record of blocking black judicial nominees. He unsuccessfully prosecuted black civil rights activists for voter fraud in 1985 ― including a former aide to Martin Luther King, Jr. A year later, he was rejected for a federal judgeship over allegations he called a black attorney “boy,” suggested a white lawyer working for black clients was a race traitor and referred to civil rights groups as “un-American” and trying to “force civil rights down the throats of people who were trying to put problems behind them.”
Senator Sessions has a real problem with civil rights where African Americans are involved
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, doubled down Tuesday in calling the Voting Rights Act “intrusive” and struggled to say how he would enforce the law going forward.
“It is intrusive. The Supreme Court on more than one occasion has described it legally as an intrusive act, because you’re only focused on a certain number of states,” Sessions said of the act in response to a question from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). “Normally when Congress passes law it applies to the whole country. So it’s a very unusual thing for a law to be passed that targets only a few states, but they had a factual basis."
Sessions added that the act “changed the whole course of history,” mainly in the South.
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