Sessions offered a false explanation when later questioned by Senators about the alleged incident involving Democratic county commissioner Douglas Wicks

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Donald Trump’s nominee for US attorney general was once accused of calling a black official in Alabama a “nigger”, and then gave a false explanation to the US Senate when testifying about the allegation.

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Senator Jeff Sessions was said to have used the racist term in November 1981, when talking about the first black man to be elected as a county commissioner in Mobile, where Sessions was a Republican party official and a federal prosecutor.

Asked about the alleged remark five years later, during Senate hearings on his ill-fated nomination by President Ronald Reagan for a federal judgeship, Sessions denied saying it and claimed the alleged timing did not stand up to scrutiny.

“My point is there was not a black county commissioner at that time,” Sessions said, in response to questions from Joe Biden, then a senator for Delaware. “The black was only elected later.”

But this was not true. Public records show Douglas Wicks had become the first black person elected to one of Mobile’s three county commission seats in September 1980 – more than a year before Sessions allegedly referred to him using the racist term.

Wicks, a Democrat, said in an interview that he was made aware of Sessions’s alleged remark about him at the time. He alleged that Sessions was hostile toward him and other African Americans.

“Sessions wasn’t the only one,” said Wicks. “It was commonplace at the time. You had a very racist atmosphere.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Douglas Wicks was the first black person elected to one of Mobile’s three county commission seats. Photograph: Courtesy Douglas Wicks

A spokesman for Sessions did not respond to a request for comment.

The Republican-controlled US Senate judiciary committee voted in June 1986 to reject the appointment of Sessions to the southern Alabama judgeship, after hearing of the alleged slur about Wicks and several other allegations of racist remarks.

Sessions, a former US attorney and state attorney general, has been a US senator for Alabama since 1997. His nomination last week by Trump for US attorney general has reopened a decades-long dispute about his racial views.

Cornell Brooks, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), called his selection “deeply troubling”. Democratic congressman Luis Gutierrez of Illinois said Sessions was the choice of people who had “nostalgia for the days when blacks kept quiet”.

If confirmed, Sessions would succeed the first and second African Americans to serve as US attorney general, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.

Trump’s presidential transition team on Sunday released a list of endorsements for his nomination of Sessions from a series of law enforcement organizations and former federal officials.



John Ashcroft, the former US attorney general, described the suggestion that Sessions was racist as a “30-year-old fabrication” and said the senator was fair to everyone. “Nothing so completely rivals the injustice of racism more profoundly than the reckless labeling of persons who are not,” Ashcroft said in a statement.

The header to the Trump team’s press release said the endorsement list featured both “civil rights and law enforcement groups”. But the only purported civil rights group mentioned was the Black American Leadership Alliance, a rightwing group whose leadership has ties to an anti-immigration campaign network that was declared a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Sessions was accused during the 1986 Senate hearings of calling the NAACP “un-American”, and to have said he thought the Ku Klux Klan were “OK until I found out they smoked pot”. He later said this comment was meant as a joke.

Sessions’s deputy in the US attorney’s office for Alabama’s southern district, who was black, testified to senators that Sessions had called him “boy” and instructed him to be careful what he said to white people.

Wicks, the black Mobile official, said he did not hear Sessions use racist language himself but was informed that he had done so by Cain Kennedy, who was Alabama’s first black circuit judge. Kennedy, a former state legislator, died in 2005.

The allegation that Sessions slurred Wicks was made public by Dan Wiley, another Democratic county commissioner in Mobile. In the 1980 elections, Wiley had defeated a Republican opponent by just eight votes.



Sessions, who was a member of the county’s Republican executive committee, had been involved in running the losing GOP campaign. He then led a long, bitterly fought and ultimately unsuccessful legal battle by the Republicans to overturn the election result, alleging various irregularities in the vote.

This appeal was still moving through the state and federal courts late in 1981, well after Wicks was elected to the county commission in September 1980 and had taken office the following January.

The “nigger” allegation was relayed to Sessions by Biden during the Senate hearings on the judgeship in March 1986. Sessions was accused of stating that Jon Archer, the third county commissioner and the only Republican, would keep a close eye on Wiley and Wicks, the two Democrats. Wiley died in 2008.

“It is suggested that you stated to Mr Wiley at the conclusion of a particularly contentious hearing back in 1981, ‘Do not worry,’ or ‘do not be too happy’ – he could not remember the precise phrase – ‘Jon,’ meaning Archer, ‘will be watching you and the nigger,’” said Biden.

Sessions denied this. “Senator, I did not,” he said. “That is an absolute false statement.” After Biden accepted the denial, Sessions made his false remark about the timing of the alleged statement, which went unchallenged by the senators.

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Wicks said he quickly made himself unpopular among the Mobile establishment after his election by working to dismantle racial segregation and bias in county institutions from the jails system to the libraries.

“I was quite outspoken and frankly I was quite knowledgable,” said Wicks.

Spokespeople for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

