U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow issued high praise for Donald Trump’s “inspired” decision to tap Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions as his Attorney General.
“Senator Sessions is a good man and a great man. He has done more to protect the jobs and enhance the wages of black workers than anyone in either house of Congress over the last 10 years,” Kirsanow told
Breitbart.
Indeed, arguably no U.S. lawmaker has worked more tirelessly than Jeff Sessions to
uphold the legacy of Civil Rights leader and late-Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Jordan–who, in arguing for immigration reductions, famously declared that immigration policy “ought to be a place where the national interest comes first, last, and always.”
“Of all the Senators and public officials that I’ve dealt with, I cannot think of anyone who has been more devoted to issues related to wages and employment levels of all Americans, but particularly black American workers,” Kirsanow said of Sessions.
It’s a matter that we have discussed in several Congressional hearings— the most recent of which was in March of this year. He has chaired the [Senate] subcommittee dealing with the impact of… immigration on the employment levels of black Americans.
“He is a man of tremendous integrity. I think it was an inspired pick,” Kirsanow added. “He’s going to be a marvelous Attorney General.”
“Senator Sessions has been a leader in the fight for preserving American jobs and ensuring opportunities for African American workers,” civil rights attorney and founder of the Black American Leadership Alliance, Leah Durant, told
Breitbart News.
William Smith, the first Republican African American to serve as Chief Counsel on the Senate Judiciary committee, similarly applauded the announcement:
I had the opportunity to work with Senators Sessions for close to 10 years. Throughout that time, he was more a friend and confidant than the boss. I believe he hired me as the first ever Republican African American Chief Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee and I’m not sure there has been another one since me. After I moved to Alabama to practice law and then returned to Washington, Senator Sessions offered me the position of Chief Counsel on the full Judiciary Committee and then basically created a position for me on his Senate Budget Committee, where I continued as his Chief.
“Jeff Sessions is a man of high character and great integrity. He would make an outstanding Attorney General and I’m excited to support him 100 percent,” Smith continued:
[N]ot once did Senator Sessions ever say anything to offend me. Instead, time after time, he stood by me and the conservative causes I was out to support. I remember spending several late nights in the office, not talking about working, but talking about life and family. Senator Sessions was always concerned for my well being. Because he is such a great man, one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made was leaving his employment. In his kindness, he told me if I wanted to come back, I could. He, Mary and his children have treated me like family and I’ll always be grateful for that.
Both Kirsanow and Durant flatly rejected corporate media’s efforts to cast Sessions as anything less than a true champion of black working Americans. “It’s scandalous that they’re trying to say he’s a racist,” Kirsanow told
Breitbart:
They are trying to demonize the Alabama of 2016 as somehow being the Alabama of 1946. And they are trying to similarly falsely caricature Sen. Sessions. But that is not the case. I’ve gotten the opportunity to deal with him on a regular basis and he is a wonderful human being.
While corporate media is now recycling smears used 30 years ago to deny Sessions a federal judgeship in the 1980s, even individuals who voted against Sessions’ confirmation at the time ultimately came to regret their decision.
“My vote against candidate Sessions for the federal court was a mistake because I have since found that Sen. Sessions is egalitarian,” said the now-deceased Democratic and Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter.
As the
Weekly Standard‘s Mark Hemingway
reports, the smear campaign against Sessions collapses upon even a cursory review of Sessions’ actual record, which includes desegregating schools and taking on the Klan in Alabama.
For instance, Sessions “was one of the only Republican senators to support Eric Holder’s nomination for attorney general,” Hemingway notes:
As a U.S. Attorney he filed several cases to desegregate schools in Alabama. And he also prosecuted the head of the state Klan, Henry Francis Hays, for abducting and killing Michael Donald, a black teenager selected at random. Sessions insisted on the death penalty for Hays. When he was later elected the state Attorney General, Sessions followed through and made sure Hays was executed. The successful prosecution of Hays also led to a $7 million civil judgment against the Klan, effectively breaking the back of the KKK in Alabama.
Similarly, as a U.S. Senator, Sessions has led the fight to defend the jobs and wages of American workers—in particular, those of black American workers.
A full two years before Trump eventually heeded Sessions’ call and
proclaimed that under his leadership the GOP would become a “worker’s party,” Sessions
urged the Republicans to
“becom[e] the Party of Work” by advancing America first policies—particularly on the issues of immigration and trade— that would prioritize and advance the interests of the working American men and women of all backgrounds and legal immigrants already here.
Sessions led the fight against the
Paul Ryan-backed controversial expansion to the H-2B visa program, which a
2015 Buzzfeed exposé revealed is being used to disproportionately lay off and replace black American workers.
Perhaps more than any other lawmaker on Capitol Hill, Sessions’ office sought to give sunlight to the discriminatory hiring practices exposed by the Buzzfeed investigation.
According to the report, a supervisor at Hamilton Growers told workers amid mass layoffs: “All you black American people, f**k you all … just go to the office and pick up your check.” The report noted:
According to a lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, about 80 workers, many of them black, were simply
told: ‘All you Americans are fired.” […] Time after time, the grower filled the jobs with foreign guest workers instead [of American workers]… many businesses go to extraordinary lengths to skirt the law, deliberately denying jobs to American workers so they can hire foreign workers on H-2 visas instead.
Civil Rights Advocates Praise Jeff Sessions for Protecting Black American Workers - Breitbart