Next to the White House, the most talked-about federal entity in my world of the ’50s and ’60s was the Justice Department. Few editions of the Washington Afro American newspaper or weekly Jet magazine failed to contain mention of a DOJ action in civil rights enforcement. Bring up the scourge of discrimination, and Justice was there, or so it seemed.

The Justice Department’s role in promoting equal justice for all was, and remains, indispensable.

Which draws attention to President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to the position of attorney general of the United States. Confirmation hearings are scheduled for next week.

It was no small moment when NAACP protesters, led by their national president, Cornell W. Brooks, staged a sit-in and got arrested Tuesday at Sessions’s Mobile, Ala., office. Or when more than 1,100 professors from 170 law schools in 48 states wrote to urge the Senate to reject Sessions.

Charging that Sessions can’t be trusted to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer for voting rights, Brooks said, “We have an attorney general nominee who does not acknowledge the reality of voter suppression while mouthing faith in the myth of voter fraud.”

The army of law professors agreed.

“We are convinced,” they wrote, “that Jeff Sessions will not fairly enforce our nation’s laws and promote justice and equality in the United States.”

The focus of their concerns is Sessions’s 1986 nomination for a federal judgeship; his rejection by the Senate due in part to his prosecution of black voting rights activists on voter fraud charges when he was a U.S. attorney in Alabama; and his alleged racially insensitive remarks during his tenure there. Former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, who as a staff lawyer at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund represented the three voting-rights workers targeted by Sessions, sent a scathing letter to the Senate opposing Sessions’s confirmation.

To be sure, Sessions has his defenders, led by Trump, who said his nominee “is a world-class legal mind and considered a truly great attorney general and U.S. attorney in the state of Alabama.”

Other supporters claim Sessions is being smeared by the left. Former George W. Bush administration deputy attorney general Larry Thompson, an African American and good friend of Sessions for more than 30 years, said, “He doesn’t have a racist bone in his body.”

Another defender, George J. Terwilliger III, who served as deputy attorney general under President George H.W. Bush and has known Sessions for nearly three decades, echoed Thompson: “I can say unequivocally there’s not a racist bone in the guy’s body.”

But this is not about knowing what’s in the mind or body of Jeff Sessions.

What should matter most are his words and deeds as a U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, as attorney general of Alabama and as a U.S. senator.

Is Sessions the right person to place in charge of the central agency for enforcement of our federal laws?

If confirmed, the nation will have an attorney general who, as a senator:

● Applauded the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, which gutted key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

●Voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.

●Voted yes on a constitutional ban of same-sex marriage.

●Opposed the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

●Opposed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

●Voted to ease restrictions on wiretapping of cellphones.

●Voted to abolish a program that helps businesses owned by women and minorities compete for federally funded transportation projects.

●Opposed comprehensive immigration reform and nearly every immigration bill that has come before the Senate over the past two decades, including voting against a Senate resolution affirming that the United States must not bar people from the country because of their religion.

That is the record of an individual who would have the major say in which cases the Justice Department litigated and who was recommended for federal judgeships. This would be the person who determined whether the Justice Department would be driven by ideology and politics palatable to Trump or if the department would follow and uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States.

What’s more, this attorney general wouldn’t be flying solo. If confirmed, Sessions will take with him a posse of new presidential appointees, including a deputy attorney general and a collection of assistant attorneys general for civil rights, criminal, national security and tax divisions, to name a few. Ninety-three U.S. attorneys and 94 U.S. marshals, many of them new, would have to call him boss.

Entrust Jeff Sessions to fairly, openly and impartially administer justice and protect the rights of all Americans?

Not if his own public record is any guide.

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