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Will Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III Make America White Again?
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ake_america_white_again_20161122/
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Posted on Nov 22, 2016
By Bill Blum
Jeff Sessions at a Donald Trump campaign rally at which Trump outlined a
10-point plan on immigration. The event took place in Phoenix in August.
(Gage Skidmore / CC BY-SA 2.0
(https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/29377804025) )
President-elect Donald John Trump has named Sen. Jefferson Beauregard
Sessions III, R-Ala., to be his attorney general.
Take a moment to let that sink in: If confirmed, Jefferson Beauregard
Sessions III will become the nation's top law enforcement official, in
charge of overseeing the legality of federal programs ranging from
immigration to national security and voting rights.
Ordinarily, I wouldn't begin a column by highlighting the given name of a
government appointee. I'd focus instead on policy. But Sessions is an
exception-the rare case in which appellation, lineage and ideology intersect
and overlap, illuminating the dangers of a nominee rather than obscuring
them.
Like his father and grandfather before him, Sessions was christened after
Jefferson Davis (http://www.nndb.com/people/295/000032199/) , the president
of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, and
Brig. Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard, who resigned as the
superintendent of West Point in 1861 to take command of the first
Confederate army at Fort Sumter.
In his long career as a lawyer and legislator, the 69-year-old Sessions-who
prefers the diminutive "Jeff"-has done much to make his namesakes proud.
Like them, he's made copious statements, taken actions and, in his instance,
cast votes that can be described in a single word: racist.
Sessions graduated from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1973, and
after a brief stint in private practice in Russellville and Mobile and a
short deployment in the Army Reserve, he became an assistant U.S. attorney
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Sessions#Early_life_and_education)
(AUSA) for the Southern District of Alabama in 1975. Six years later,
President Reagan appointed him the head U.S. attorney for the district.
The Office of the United States Attorneys serves as the principal litigation
arm (https://www.justice.gov/usao/mission) of the attorney general and the
Department of Justice. Currently, there are 93 U.S. attorneys stationed
throughout the country. Together, they conduct most of the trial work, both
civil and criminal, in which the U.S. is a party. They are appointed by the
president and must be confirmed by the Senate. On the job, they are vested
with tremendous discretion regarding the kind of lawsuits to initiate, and
the kind of defenses to raise when the government is sued.
It didn't take long for Sessions to show his colors once he was installed to
run the southern Alabama district.
Early in his tenure, he was confronted with a gruesome case involving two Ku
Klux Klan members who in 1981 had kidnapped and murdered a black teenager
named Michael Donald. Although Sessions has long taken credit for bringing
civil rights charges against the Klansmen, the charges, in fact, were filed
only at the urging of Thomas Figures, an African-American AUSA who later
became one of Sessions' most outspoken critics. Figures subsequently
collaborated with lawyers from the Justice Department's Civil Rights
Division to win a federal conviction against one of the perpetrators.
Sessions, however, turned over
(http://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/03/us/alabama-judge-overrules-jury-sentences
-a-klansman-to-death.html) the murder prosecution of the lead defendant,
Henry Hays, to the local district attorney. Hays was thereafter convicted in
state court, and was sentenced to death
(http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-11th-circuit/1304129.html) . He was executed
in 1997.
Stories currently circulated by right-wing media
(http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/11/18/impeach-spawn-of-satan-je
ff-sessions-actually-took-on-the-kkk-and-desegregated-schools-n2247704 )
asserting that Sessions and his office handled Hays' murder trial are false.
Nor did Sessions play a direct role, as some on the right have written, in
securing a $7 million verdict in 1987 against the Alabama-based United Klans
of America for Donald's killing. That judgment was obtained by Morris Dees
(http://articles.latimes.com/1987-05-20/news/mn-927_1_michael-donald) of
the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In a case from 1985, Sessions let his racism completely out of the bag,
prosecuting three civil rights organizers
(https://newrepublic.com/article/61363/closed-sessions ;) , including a
former aide to Martin Luther King Jr., for voter fraud arising from a
registration drive aimed at poor and elderly residents in several "black
belt" Alabama counties during the 1984 Democratic primary election. Sessions
based his case on 14 absentee ballots returned by African-Americans that he
alleged had been altered. A total of 1.7 million votes were cast
statewide-and none was deemed tainted by Sessions.
From the start, the case raised outcries of selective prosecution. The
defendants, who hailed from the small town of Marion, northeast of Selma,
came to be known as the "Marion Three." They were acquitted on all counts
(https://www.thenation.com/article/the-first-senator-to-endorse-donald-trump
-is-a-longtime-opponent-of-civil-rights/) after the jury deliberated for a
mere three hours. Sessions has never apologized for bringing the case
(http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/11/18/black-belt-voter-fra
ud-case-alabama-shaped-sen-jeff-sessions-career/94088186/) and has denied
ever since that it was designed to target black voters.
Despite Sessions' evident prejudice, Reagan nominated him to become a
federal district court judge in 1986. His confirmation hearings before the
Senate Judiciary Committee that year were marked by detailed accusations of
racism.
Attorney Figures, who went on to become a municipal judge in Alabama and who
died last year, testified at the hearings that Sessions repeatedly referred
to him as "boy" during their time together at the U.S. attorney's office.
Figures added that Sessions often had spoken of the NAACP, the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, Operation Push and the National Council of
Churches as "un-American organizations with anti-traditional American
values."
Figures also explained that Sessions initially pressed him to drop the Klan
investigation, and maintained that while he and Sessions were involved in
the case, Sessions joked that he used to think the KKK was "okay until [he]
found out that they smoked pot."
After becoming a criminal defense attorney in private practice, Figures was
indicted in 1992, Sessions' last year as a U.S. Attorney, on charges of
bribery and witness tampering. He was acquitted in a trial held a year later
that his supporters claim was brought in retaliation for his criticism of
Sessions
(https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/22/jeff-sessions-racism-retali
ation-donald-trump-douglas-wicks-thomas-figures) .
Another witness before the Judiciary Committee, J. Gerald Hebert, then a
senior trial lawyer with the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division who
periodically conferred with Sessions about voting rights cases, testified
that Sessions had referred to the NAACP and the ACLU as "communist-inspired"
and had faulted the groups "for "forc[ing] civil rights down the throats of
people who were trying to put problems behind them."
Hebert recently told
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-attorney-general-jeff-sessions-ra
cist-remarks_us_582cd73ae4b099512f80c0c2) Huffington Post senior justice
reporter Ryan J. Reilly that he was "stunned" by Trump's nomination of
Sessions to become attorney general. In retrospect, Hebert said, Sessions
"demonstrated gross insensitivity to black people. So Tom Figures reporting
that he had been called 'boy' by Jeff Sessions, that wouldn't surprise me at
all."
In his defense before the Judiciary Committee, Sessions adamantly denied
ever calling Figures or anyone else in his office a "boy." He didn't deny
pinning the "un-American" tag on the National Council of Churches or the
NAACP, however, but insisted he "meant no harm by it." Rather, he testified,
he intended such remarks only to apply to civil rights organizations "when
they leave the basic discriminatory questions and start getting into matters
such as foreign policy and things of that nature and other political
issues."
Despite having the full-throated backing of the Reagan administration and
vigorous support on the judiciary panel from his close friend, Alabama
Republican Jeremiah Denton, who recommended his appointment to the bench,
Sessions' nomination failed to make it
(http://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/20/us/senator-urges-withdrawal-of-judicial-n
omination.html) out of committee. It was withdrawn the following July.
Unfortunately, Sessions' legal and political career survived his rebuke by
the Judiciary Committee. Rather than fade away in ignominy, he went on to
win election as Alabama attorney general in 1994, in which capacity he
fought court-ordered desegregation
(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/opinion/jeff-sessions-other-civil-rights-
problem.html?mwrsm=Facebook&_r=0) , and he was elected to the Senate in
1996. Today, ironically, he is a member of the Judiciary Committee.
Since taking his seat in the upper chamber, Sessions has amassed a virtually
unbroken record of ultra-conservatism, bordering at times on what can
accurately be described as authoritarian white nationalism. Among the
multitude of views he's espoused
(http://www.salon.com/2016/11/19/two-peas-in-a-racist-pod-jeff-sessions-alar
ming-history-of-opposing-civil-rights_partner/) , he has defended voter ID
laws and called the Voting Rights Act "a piece of intrusive legislation,"
denounced the Black Lives Matter Movement
(http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jeff-sessions-race-civil-rights/story?id=436
33501) as "radical" and guilty of promoting "false" claims about police
abuse, consistently opposed
(https://theintercept.com/2016/11/18/career-racist-jeff-sessions-is-donald-t
rumps-pick-for-attorney-general/) criminal justice reform, and resisted
calls for removal of the Confederate flag from government facilities.
He has also supported Trump's proposed ban on the immigration of Muslims and
the president-elect's vow to build a border wall. He has called for slowing
down the rate of legal immigration, cancelling federal funds to sanctuary
cities and ending the 14th Amendment's guarantee of birthright citizenship.
He's decried the advent of gay marriage, and opposed abortion rights and the
Violence Against Women Act. He's also been a militant war hawk in foreign
policy matters, and a staunch proponent
(http://www.ontheissues.org/Senate/Jeff_Sessions.htm) of gun rights and
enhanced government spying under the Patriot Act.
As attorney general
(https://www.justice.gov/jmd/organization-mission-and-functions-manual-attor
ney-general) , Sessions would manage the entire Department of Justice. He
would supervise the operations not only of the U.S. attorney's offices
across the country and the Civil Rights Division, but also the solicitor
general, who represents the interests of the federal government in cases
argued before the Supreme Court. He would have the president's ear in making
recommendations for future Supreme Court nominations.
In short, once installed, Sessions would be ideally positioned to help
transform Trump's central campaign slogan-"Make America Great Again"-into
its actual intended objective of making the nation "white" again.
Although Democrats hold only 48 Senate seats following their debacle at the
polls, there is still a margin of hope that civil rights and liberties
activists can force them to muster up the courage and shame a handful of
Republicans to join them in blocking Sessions. Nothing on the near-term
progressive agenda is more important than stopping Jefferson Beauregard
Sessions III from becoming attorney general of the United States.
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