'Nobody on no side of the aisle could find nothing wrong with her,' Al Sharpton said. In Selma, focus shifts to Loretta Lynch Her stalled nomination attracts attention.

SELMA, Ala. — She didn’t speak at any of the events. She showed up in a motorcade herself Saturday to President Barack Obama’s speech here at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and disappeared into the official seating area without anyone recognizing her.

But Loretta Lynch was elevated to a cause here this weekend—her stalled confirmation to be the new attorney general turned into a call for action in the legacy of Bloody Sunday.


Lynch was nominated by Obama in November. She wasn’t voted out of committee until the end of February. Her confirmation vote by the full Senate could come as early as this week — and she has several Republican supporters, including Sens. Orrin Hatch (Utah), Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Jeff Flake (Arizona), who all voted for her in the Judiciary Committee — but has so far been frozen by the Republican leadership. Senators including Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) have threatened to block the confirmation out of protest over Obama’s immigration executive actions.

That makes Lynch’s confirmation process the longest in recent history.

“You don’t think we notice that?” Rev. Al Sharpton called out at Brown Chapel, the church famous for being where John Lewis and other Bloody Sunday marchers took shelter 50 years ago after being beaten by Alabama state troopers during a civil rights march.

“Nobody on no side of the aisle could find nothing wrong with her,” Sharpton said.

Lynch sat in the front row, with current Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Labor Secretary Tom Perez and Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan.

Introduced to the congregation, Lynch drew a loud round of applause — outmatched only by the one for Holder.

Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, urged the congregation at Brown Chapel and the hundreds of people swarmed outside watching the proceedings on a jumbotron to leave Selma with three priorities: a renewal of the Voting Rights Act and police reform, but before anything, calling senators and urging them to move Lynch’s confirmation immediately.

That, Ifill said, is carrying on Selma’s legacy means.

“They did what they did under the threat of dogs and billy clubs and tear gas. You have to do what you must do today,” Ifill said.

Holder himself stopped short of an outright call for her confirmation. But he said he was confident that she’d get there eventually, and pick up his efforts on behalf of civil rights and protecting voting that he said Selma was a searing reminder of.

“I am proud of the work done by the Department of Justice, and I know that my successor, Loretta Lynch — who is with us today — will continue to fight aggressively on behalf of this sacred right,” Holder said.

Sharpton said the racism was unmistakable — the same racism, he said, that had people chase a person as accomplished as Obama for a birth certificate, or hold Holder in contempt of Congress only because they thought “he was contemptible .. that he was attorney general in the first place.”

Looking out at “Sister Lynch” himself, Rev. Jesse Jackson reminisced about her father, a Baptist minister in North Carolina whom Jackson blamed for getting him started down the path to activism that got him arrested his first three times.

“I don’t have good credit because of your dad,” Jackson said.

Her first order of business once she’s confirmed, Jackson joked, should be to clear his name.