Coretta Scott King Wrote a Letter Opposing Jeff Sessions's 1986 Nomination as Federal Judge
LatestThe Senate confirmation hearings for Jeff Sessions, the good ol’ boy from Alabama and Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, got underway today and by all accounts, it was a real doozy. Sessions spent a lot of time answering questions about his racist past and values that heavily influenced his policymaking – so racist, in fact, that in 1986, when he was up for a federal judgeship, Coretta Scott King wrote a letter to Congress strongly urging them to reconsider.
In the letter, obtained by the Washington Post, Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow said that appointing Sessions as a federal judge would “irreparably damage” all the work her husband did for civil rights in this country. The letter was instrumental in the arguments against Sessions’s confirmation to federal judge and was ultimately part of the reason why he was denied.