Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III, the junior Republican senator from Alabama.
Names are markers. They not only identify who we are but also whose we are. I met a young man named Lupe once; the first thing that popped into my head was, “that’s a woman’s name.” It’s short for Guadalupe. Lupe explained to me that one naming tradition of Latinx people is to name a child born on the day of the Virgin of Guadalupe after that icon; also, a part of that tradition is to name a firstborn son after the father’s father. And there you have it: Lupe was named for his paternal grandfather, who had been born on the day of the Virgin de Guadalupe.
African Americans within the United States, for the most part, have names that were passed down through a slave-holding society which was primarily English. No surprise there. Beginning en masse in the 1960s and continuing to today, many African Americans have made a conscious decision to change their names—sometimes legally, sometimes not—to names from the African continent in an effort to reconnect with a history and lineage that was brutally repressed. The names can be cultural, religious, or reflect a combination: Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee member Stokely Carmichael became Kwame Ture; Lew Alcindor became a Muslim and changed his name to Kareem Abdul Jabbar; Yvette Stevens joined the Black Panther Party and became Chaka Khan. In choosing a name for a child, the idea is to give a name that will bring honor to the family but also direction to the child for the future. For an adult choosing an African name, the name should tell who the person is, but also, who the person should become; a name that identifies an individual as valiant or a clear communicator, for example, is also an admonishment to the person to continue to strive for those traits.
Which brings me to president-(s)elect Donald Trump’s pick for United States Attorney General: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III. Jeff, as he’s fondly known, was named after his father and had no choice in the matter. Likewise, Jefferson Beauregard, Jr. was named for his father. And, like his subsequent progeny, the Sr. and first Jefferson Beauregard also did not have a say in his name, but that’s not important. What is important is the Sr. and first Jeff Sessions was born on April 13, 1861, the day after Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. The attack was the opening salvo of the war of secession from the United States of several slave-holding southern states; South Carolina had left the union that preceding December. Those states that seceded declared themselves the Confederate States of America, and their president was Jefferson Davis. It’s a safe bet that the Sr. and first Jeff Sessions’ father, Jonathan, was as aware as any fellow Alabaman of the mood in the southern region prior to those shots being fired off the coast of South Carolina. It’s also a pretty safe bet to guesstimate where Jonathan stood when he gave his son the names of two Confederate officials.
It might seem unfair to some to judge someone like contemporary Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions through an ancient African-centered lens that looks at a person’s name as both an identifier and an indicator. Okay then. Let’s not do that. Let’s just look at his actions. That should tell us everything we need to know.
And then some.
