Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was nominated as a federal judge by Ronald Reagan in 1986, but was sent back to Alabama by a Republican-controlled Senate committee when witnesses testified that Jefferson Beauregard had been disrespectful and demeaning to blacks he worked with, referred to the ACLU and NAACP as “communist inspired,” and had said the only thing wrong with the KKK was that “they smoked pot.”
But now that Donald Trump is putting Sessions in charge of administering civil rights, the Weekly Standard is rushing to throw some genteel pshaws at that idea he has a single racist bone in his entirely righteous body.
... between the nature of the accusations and Sessions's actual record of desegregating schools and taking on the Klan in Alabama, it strains credulity to believe that he is a racist.
The charge is that, since Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was fighting to desegregate schools, he obviously wasn’t a racist, and the KKK remark was clearly “a joke” because Sessions was actually bust back in Alabama getting the death sentence for a Klan leader who killed a young African American.
The trouble with these two big assertions—which form not just the substance but the headline of the article—is that neither one is even remotely true. And neither are other claims being made to support “Jeff.”
Author Keven Kruse took the Sessions hagiography apart in a series of Tweets.
What the Weekly Standard claimed:
As a U.S. Attorney he filed several cases to desegregate schools in Alabama. And he also prosecuted Klansman Henry Francis Hays, son of Alabama Klan leader Bennie Hays, for abducting and killing Michael Donald, a black teenager selected at random. Sessions insisted on the death penalty for Hays. When he was later elected the state Attorney General, Sessions followed through and made sure Hays was executed. The successful prosecution of Hays also led to a $7 million civil judgment against the Klan, effectively breaking the back of the KKK in Alabama.
What Kruse found ...
I can’t find any evidence Sessions “filed several cases" to desegregate schools.
And when it comes to the death penalty case against the Klan leader, there’s no sign that Sessions was involved in any way. Not in trying the case, not in pushing for the death penalty.
Since Kraus began pointing out the errors in the original article, the portion around Sessions’s action against the Klan has been twice re-written. However, the portion on school desegregation, along with the headline and opening paragraph, remain unaltered.
On the desegregation issue:
Every county in his jurisdiction was already under deseg. orders from 1960s; no sign Sessions or anyone else filed new cases in 1980s.
Supporters of Sessions have also been making a claim based on his opposition to George Wallace.
“Aides to Session said that he was not insensitive to African Americans,” the Post reported, “and pointed out that as a young Republican at Huntingdon College in 1966, Sessions campaigned against segregationist candidates such as Lurleen Wallace, who was running for governor to sustain the policies of her husband, then-governor George Wallace, a staunch opponent of desegregation.”
But like Sessions’ nonexistent attacks on the KKK and his phantom efforts to desegregate schools, there’s a problem with this story. Sessions wasn’t actually campaigning against Lurleen Wallace, he was campaigning for Jim Martin.
… this telling elides an important fact: Jim D. Martin, the Republican candidate running against Wallace, was also a segregationist.
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is building up quite a resume—too bad it’s all lies.