Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow Coretta Scott King wrote a letter that was submitted against Jeff Sessions back in 1986, when he was being considered for a federal judgeship. According to Buzzfeed, this letter was a cornerstone of the general case against Jeff Sessions for the job, pointing out how terrible a person Sessions had been for civil rights.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond never put the letter into the congressional record, and its contents are largely unknown. But in the only line that has been made public — published in June 1986 by Knight Ridder reporter Aaron Epstein — King made clear her opposition to Sessions’ nomination.
“For a century, the racial practices that characterized our region were established and enforced by men who, like Mr. Sessions, protested that they, too, were not personally hostile to blacks,” King’s letter said, according to Epstein’s dispatch.
According to Buzzfeed, Democrats cannot get the letter released as they are beholden to committee rules that give only Sen. Chuck Grassley the power to do that. The question is, can a Democratic senator just read it out loud as a part of their time? A colleague wondered out loud whether the Democrats have access to it at all or if it's in the elephant-shaped vault in Sen. Grassley's office.