Story highlights Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump

He's a conservative from Alabama

(CNN) Jeff Sessions, the first US senator to endorse Donald Trump, has been one of the President-elect's top supporters so it's no surprise that he is being considered as a potential Cabinet member.

But with the new attention on Sessions -- who has emerged as the top candidate to be the next attorney general, according to a transition official, setting up a potential Senate confirmation hearing -- old allegations of racism against the Alabama Republican are sure to haunt him.

It was 30 years ago that Sessions was denied a federal judgeship. At the time, he was a 39-year-old US attorney in Alabama.

The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony during hearings in March and May 1986, that Sessions had made racist remarks and called the NAACP and ACLU "un-American."

Thomas Figures, a black assistant US attorney who worked for Sessions, testified that Sessions called him "boy" on multiple occasions and joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying that he thought Klan members were "OK, until he learned that they smoked marijuana."

Read More