Donald Trump wants to make Jeff Sessions the head of the Department of Justice (DOJ). In 1986 when President Reagan wanted to make him a top judge in Alabama, Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King Jr, opposed it, writing a nine-page letter to the Senate:
“Anyone who has used the power of his office as United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free exercise of the ballot by citizens should not be elevated to our courts. Mr Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters. For this reprehensible conduct, he should not be rewarded with a federal judgeship.”
Here is some of what she said in the letter:
“The Voting Rights Act was, and still is, vitally important to the future of democracy in the United States. I was privileged to join Martin and many others during the Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights in 1965.”
Part of what had come out of that march, besides the Voting Rights Act of 1965, was the Perry County Civic League. They used absentee ballots to effect, something Whites had been doing for years. In 1984 Sessions called it voter fraud and used the power of his office to go after its leadership. He had the FBI show up at the doors of older Blacks who had voted, frightening them out of voting:
“doing with a federal prosecution what the local sheriffs accomplished twenty years ago with clubs and cattle prods.”
Sessions went after absentee ballots in Black-majority counties, not White ones.
“Free exercise of voting rights is so fundamental to American democracy that we can not tolerate any form of infringement of those rights. Of all the groups who have been disenfranchised in our nation’s history, none has struggled longer nor suffered more in the attempt to win the vote than Black citizens. No group has had access to the ballot box denied so persistently and intently. Over the past century, a broad array of schemes have been used in attempts to block the Black vote.”
These days it is called voter suppression. It is no small matter:
“The exercise of the franchise is an essential means by which our citizens ensure that those who are governing will be responsible. My husband called it the number one civil right. The denial of access to the ballot box ultimately results in the denial of other fundamental rights.”
Which is just what unfolded under Jim Crow.
“If we are going to make our timeless dream of justice through democracy a reality, we must take every possible step to ensure that the spirit and intent of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution is honored.”
The DOJ that Trump wants to put Sessions in charge of is the very government department in charge of upholding the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – putting the fox in charge of the hen house.
– Abagond, 2018.
See also:
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Reblogged this on League of Bloggers For a Better World.
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So, what’s the game plan coach? Will he be confirmed or not?
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Jeff Sessions was endorsed by the son of the civil rights advocates he prosecuted in Alabama. Yeah he was torpedoed in 1986, but Albert Turner, Jr. thinks that Sessions gave his parents a fair trial and was mislead by bad evidence from the prosecutors and witnesses.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-son-of-civil-rights-activists-1483546293-htmlstory.html
None of this means you have to like Sessions or Trump. But Trump is the president and he could pick someone worse.
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@ abagond
“… absentee ballots in Black-majority counties … These days it is called voter suppression. It is no small matter:”
Apparently it is a small matter to you. Which is why I’m wondering why you’re now and have been failing to mention the other 99% of voter suppression methods/tactics??
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@ Fan
I will be doing a post on voter suppression. It is on my list of promised posts.
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@ gro jo
The Republicans control the Senate, so all of Trump’s top picks are likely to sail through.
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@Joe
It doesn’t matter, with a personality of Joe, sectors like the Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice will all be rendered useless or dissolved altogether. I don’t care that some activists for years ago had anything to share concerning Sessions. He was probably paid to make those statements for all we know….
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There you have it from a firsthand witness.
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Basket of Deplorables.
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When responding to Joe, TeddyBearDaddy said: “sectors like the Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice will all be rendered useless or dissolved altogether.”
Pardon me, did I miss something? At what point and time was the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ, was of good use, particularly concerning the so-called civil rights of Black folks?
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@blakksage
They ain’t. But Eric Holder helped with something if not but briefly. This Sessions guy will end all investigations into misconducts of law enforcement across the country or make them a shill of former self… I’ve been stopped maybe 3 times in my early 20s for absolutely nothing and others worse… Lucky I’m a slight reclusive so the count might have been higher if I was more outgoing…
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Hell has unleashed its minions. Pity.
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The devils have all left hell they are in Trump’s cabinet.
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Oh hell.
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Elizabeth Warren tried to read this letter aloud in the Senate. The Republicans stopped her.
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Remember the Republican who shouted “you lie!” during Obama’s State of the Union address? Remember the leaders of the Republican Party defending him and his right to free speech?!? He didn’t get gagged and silenced like they’ve done to Elizabeth Warren.
#shepersisted
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[…] Coretta Scott King on Jeff Sessions […]
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