Honor Dr. King by Opposing Jeff Sessions as Attorney General
His Republican colleagues have sought to portray him as a champion for civil rights. They’re wrong.

Sixty years to the day after the founding of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a letter written by his wife, Coretta Scott King, surfaced. The letter, kept off the record now for three decades, was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1986 to strongly oppose the nomination of Jeff Sessions to the federal bench in Alabama.
“It is my strongly-held view that the appointment of Jefferson Sessions to the federal bench would irreparably damage the work of my husband, Al Turner, and countless others who risked their lives and freedom over the past twenty years to ensure equal participation in our democratic system,” King wrote. Turner was an Alabama civil rights leader against whom Sessions tried controversially and unsuccessfully for voter fraud.
In the 30 years since — 20 of them as a U.S. Senator — Sessions has shown the nation little to suggest he is now fit to serve as U.S. Attorney General, the position that President-elect Donald Trump wants him to fill. More than 430 national, state, and local civil and human rights organizations made that point in an open letter to the Senate, slamming Sessions’ lengthy “record of racial insensitivity, bias against immigrants, disregard for the rule of law, and hostility to the protection of civil rights.”
Sessions’ testimony on Tuesday during his confirmation hearing was not comforting to civil rights organizations. But the courage and integrity of Black lawmakers who spoke forcefully on Wednesday against his confirmation certainly was.
“In 2015, a retired judge, who was White, told me that it was those brave marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge who inspired him as a young lawyer in the 1960s to seek justice for all in New Jersey and begin representing Black families looking to integrate White neighborhoods, Black families who were turned away and denied housing. One of those families was mine,” Sen. Cory Booker, D. N.J., told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I am literally sitting here because of people, marchers in Alabama and volunteer lawyers in New Jersey, who saw it as their affirmative duty to pursue justice, to fight discrimination, to stand up for those who are marginalized. But the march for justice in our country still continues, it is still urgent.”
Sessions knows the Edmund Pettus Bridge well. He was born in Selma, Ala., where marchers, including Dr. King, risked their lives trying to secure voting rights for African Americans in 1965.
In 2015, Sessions sponsored a bill to award those marchers with the Congressional Gold Medal, an important but symbolic and noncontroversial measure that passed unanimously. Last February, at a ceremony to award the Gold Medals, Sessions spoke alongside Booker and felt regret that he hadn’t done more as a young Alabaman. “Certainly I feel like I should have stepped forward more and been a leader and a more positive force in the great events that were occurring,” Sessions said.
“More needs to be done,” he said at the end of his remarks. “We need to join closer hands.”
One of Selma’s marchers whom Sessions honored last year is Rep. John Lewis, D. Ga., who joined Booker in testifying against the nomination on Wednesday. Lewis echoed the sentiment that “more needs to be done,” but argued that Sessions isn’t the person who can accomplish it. “We have come a distance, we have made progress, but we are not there yet,” Lewis testified. “There are forces that want to take us back to another place. We don’t want to go back. We want to go forward.”
Lewis also warned senators that Sessions’ tenure in the Senate — and his close friendship with his colleagues — is not relevant to his fitness for the position.
“It doesn’t matter how Senator Sessions may smile, how friendly he may be, how he may speak to you, but we need someone who’s going to stand up, speak up, and speak out for the people that need help, for people who have been discriminated against,” Lewis said. “And it doesn’t matter whether they’re Black or White, Latino, Asian American or Native American, whether they are straight or gay, Muslim, Christian or Jews. We all live in the same house, the American house. We need someone as Attorney General who’s going to look out for all of us and not just for some of us.”
Rep. Cedric Richmond, D. La., who delivered his testimony on behalf of the entire Congressional Black Caucus that he chairs, delivered a similar message. “Simply put, Senator Sessions has advanced an agenda that will do great harm to African-American citizens and communities. For this reason, the CBC believes Senator Sessions should be disqualified. He has demonstrated a total disregard for the equal application of justice and protection of the law as it applies to African Americans and falls short on so many issues,” Richmond said.
For nearly two months, Sessions’ Republican colleagues have sought to portray him as a champion for civil rights. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R. Ky., has on multiple occasions tweeted a photo of Sessions and Lewis marching together in Selma, saying Sessions “has a strong record when it comes to civil rights.”
McConnell is right. Sessions does have a strong record on civil rights — it’s just a very bad one. Sessions may have sponsored the bill to award the Gold Medals and voted to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act in 2006, but so did every other senator. Sessions has in the past called the VRA “intrusive,” praised its gutting in 2013 as “good news” for the South, and has refused to support legislation that would help repair it. Beyond symbolic gestures, Sessions doesn’t support voting rights when it really matters.
Jeff Session is not a civil rights hero. If senators care about the protection and promotion of civil and human rights, they will honor Dr. King’s life by opposing his confirmation.






