Alabama’s Finest
Evidently, the conclusion of the 2016 election has not resolved the elevated political tension of the past calendar year. Far from pacifying his opponents, Trump’s victory has strengthened their resolve to undermine, invalidate, and overcome his upcoming presidency. Even before Trump’s inauguration, this opposition — occurring largely on social media — has called into question the legitimacy of his victory (he won the electoral college but not the popular vote), his twitter activity, and his relations with Russia, to name a few. His opponents have also made a big show of challenging each of his cabinet selections, especially his choice of Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. Although Sessions is now expected to be confirmed for the position, his nomination hearing drew significant media attention last week, both for the public interest surrounding his appointment and the notable figures who spoke against him.
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III hails from Alabama, where he was born in 1946. After spending most of his adult life involved in politics and public law, Sessions has most recently held office as a United States Senator representing his home state. The opposition to his candidacy stems largely from fear of his potential racism. Public speculation on Sessions’ racial attitudes is based on an incident during the Reagan era in which Sessions was nominated for a federal judgeship and was denied the position by a Republican-controlled committee. That denial was largely predicated on a failed prosecution of a voter fraud case in Alabama’s Perry County, a case which some people felt was an effort to undermine black voter rights. In recent years, Sessions has earned scrutiny for his criticism of the Voting Rights Act, the legislation fought for and won by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement in 1965.
Despite these accusations against his character, Sessions maintains that he supports civil rights and is not racist. Even still, his nomination has been opposed not just by the public, but by the NAACP, 1400 law professors, and Democratic senators, a few of whom testified against him during his nomination hearing. One of these was Senator John Lewis, a civil rights hero who helped lead the non-violent activism of the sixties, activism which brought about the same Voting Rights Act Sessions now finds burdensome.
Like Sessions, John Lewis was born in Alabama in the forties. The son of sharecroppers, Lewis was the youngest of the “Big Six” leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a group that played a large role in organizing the Civil Rights Movement. He helped plan the 1963 March on Washington. During the “Bloody Sunday” marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama state troopers fractured Lewis’ skull. Lewis followed up his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement with a long career in politics; he has been a member of Congress since 1984, representing Georgia’s Fifth congressional District.
Lewis’s testimony, while fierce, did not dwell on Sessions’ personal attitudes towards certain races, although he did insinuate his skepticism regarding Sessions’ sincerity:
It doesn’t matter whether Sen. Sessions may smile or how friendly he may be, whether he may speak to you. We need someone who will stand up and speak up and speak out for the people who need help, for people who are being discriminated against… We need someone as attorney general who is going to look for all of us, not just some of us.
Theses remarks illustrate a concern about Sessions that goes beyond his individual opinions. Before the election, Democrats and social-Liberals harped on the dangers of a Trump presidency, beginning with his racially insensitive rhetoric and vision of making America great again, whereas minorities and marginalized groups might disagree that America was ever great for them. As Trump now stacks his cabinet with people like Rick Perry and Ben Carson, the sense grows that Trump’s will be the most Right-wing American government in years, and therefore the most socially regressive. Lewis surmises this anxiety in his testimony:
Millions of Americans are encouraged by our country’s efforts to create a more inclusive democracy during the last 50 years, or what some of us call the Beloved Community, a community at peace with itself. They are not a minority. A clear majority of Americans say they want this to be a fair, just, and open nation. They are afraid this country is headed in the wrong direction. They are concerned that some leaders reject decades of progress and want to return to the dark past, when the power of law was used to deny the freedoms protected by the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and its Amendments. These are the voices I represent today.
Sessions, by his past and his reputation, seems to embody the Left’s greatest fears about the next four years. He is a staunch Conservative from Alabama, shrouded in rumors of racism. He holds views antithetical to what the Left has equated to social justice, and has pushed for hardline immigration reform, voter ID laws, and continued criminalization of marijuana. Politically, Sessions stands counter to the administration now exiting office, a fact which only exacerbates the loss Democrats have suffered this year. However, as Lewis points out, it remains to be seen whether the loss applies to Democrats alone:
Those who are committed to equal justice in our society wonder whether Sen. Sessions’ call for ‘law and order’ will mean today what it meant in Alabama, when I was coming up back then. The rule of law was used to violate the human and civil rights of the poor, the dispossessed, people of color.
