Black lawmakers say Sessions unfit to be attorney general

WASHINGTON — Black lawmakers said Wednesday that Sen. Jeff Sessions at times has shown hostility toward civil rights, making him unfit to be attorney general, as a 1986 letter from the widow of Martin Luther King Jr. surfaced strongly expressing opposition to the Alabama senator.

In the second day of confirmation hearings, New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, Sessions’ colleague, and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who was beaten in Alabama when he marched for civil rights in the 1960s, warned that Sessions could move the country backward if confirmed as the top law enforcement official.

“Sen. Sessions’ record does not speak to that desire, intention or will,” Booker said, noting his opposition to overhauling the criminal justice system and his positions on other issues affecting minority groups.

[...] Democrats are using the hearings to try to show that Sessions — and Trump’s administration — won’t be committed to civil rights, a chief priority of the Justice Department during the Obama administration.

On Tuesday, the NAACP released a 1986 letter from Coretta Scott King, widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., in which she said that Sessions’ actions as a federal prosecutor were “reprehensible” and that he used his office “in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters.”