The Republicans don’t want us to know the truth about Sen. Jeff Sessions’ disgusting record on voting rights. Unfortunately for them, denying the truth doesn’t actually change facts. And in the internet age, when we are able to access a slew of information to counter their claims that he is a decent and respectable gentleman, it’s pretty easy to learn how Trump’s candidate for attorney general has made a lifelong career out of trying to make it more difficult for black and brown people to vote in the South.
Gerry Hebert, a lawyer in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, testified that Sessions had called the NAACP and ACLU “Communist-inspired” and “un-American” organizations that were “trying to force civil rights down the throats of people.” Thomas Figures, who worked under Sessions as the first black prosecutor in Alabama, said that Sessions had called him “boy” and told him “to be careful what I said to white folks.” Sessions said the Voting Rights Act was “an intrusive piece of legislation.”
Of course, we don’t really need much more evidence than this. A man who feels that the Voting Rights Act is (by his own words) “intrusive” should most definitely be kept as far away from the Justice Department as possible. But there’s even more to add to the myriad of evidence against him. A recent account by Evelyn Turner, a longtime activist who spent years helping black people vote in Alabama, shows that not only was Sessions openly hostile to black voters, he also tried to jail anyone who assisted them in their attempts to access the ballot box.
In 1985, U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions indicted me, my husband, and another civil rights worker, Spencer Hogue, on false charges of election fraud for assisting elderly black citizens with absentee voting ballots. Until the day I die, I will believe that our arrests were because of our successful political activism and were designed to intimidate black voters and dampen black voting enthusiasm. Meanwhile, Sessions declined to investigate claims of unlawful white voting.
Claims of election fraud and suspicious illegal voting—sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it?
That’s a play right out of the Trump handbook, so its not surprising that they are buddies. Not only were these three people charged with fraud, but Sessions tried to impose a sentence of more than 200 years to ensure that they would never help register black voters again.
Despite none of us having any history of criminal activity, Sessions wanted to give us the maximum sentences, adding up to two centuries in prison. My husband was willing to plead guilty for crimes he didn’t commit if it would keep me from going to jail. But I knew we were innocent and refused the offer. Thankfully, the case against us, the “Marion 3,” was weak. The vast majority of charges were dismissed outright for lack of evidence, and a racially-mixed jury only took four hours of deliberation before acquitting us.
So in addition to being friendly with the KKK, considering the NAACP a terrorist organization, working against equal funding in Alabama schools, and referring to voting rights as “intrusive,” we can now add attempting to jail innocent civil rights workers to Jefferson Beauregard Sessions’ legacy.
We all know that Sessions is a completely unfit and dangerous choice for attorney general. But since the cowardly Senate is poised to confirm him anyway, all we can do is hope that our acts of resistance against this administration don’t result in us facing 200 years in prison, too.