On Jeff Sessions: 'Tell Me More'

by Mark Silva

J. Gerald Hebert, a former senior trial attorney in the Civil Rights division of the Department of Justice, was one of the voices who derailed Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III in his bid for a federal judgeship in 1986.

Sessions, who had served as the U.S. attorney in Birmingham, Ala., from 1981, had ridiculed the NAACP as a "Communist-inspired'' organization.

Now that Sessions sits as the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that once rejected the nominee of then-President Ronald Reagan for the federal bench he will have a big say in the confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's first nominee for the Supreme Court.

And Hebert, while voicing hope that Sessions has learned a thing or two about race relations in two decades, still voices some doubt about the Alabaman's ability to sit in judgment of Sotomayor, whose own comments about the relative wisdom of Latinas, compared with white men, have served as a lightning rod for her own critics.

It is Sotomayor, poised to become the first Hispanic on the nation's highest court, who said, at the University of California at Berkeley in 2001: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life. ''

But it was Sessions, Hebert recalls in an interview airing today on National Public Radio's Tell Me More, who had his own controversial words: "When the NAACP would come up, he [Sessions] would snidely remark that it was a 'pinko' organization, or communist inspired," recalls Hebert. "[Sessions] seemed to have a unprogressive attitude toward race and equal opportunity."

While Sessions, holding a powerful seat on the Judiciary Committee now, has taken strong exception to the image portrayed of him as racially prejudiced, that image once stood between him and a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.

""I would still have concerns frankly, today, just knowing the public persona of Jeff Sessions that I've seen over the years," Hebert says today. ""I hope he can (be fair in the Sotomayor hearings.) "I assume he can, and I think he can.

"I really don't know what's inside his head or his heart,'' he says. "But I do think that someone -- hopefully over 20 something years -- has learned something about the disadvantaged or minorities that clearly continue to struggle."

Read the background to this story below, and see the full Hebert interview at NPR's Tell Me More. (Photo of Sen. Jeff Sessions above by J. Scott Applewhite / AP.)

Having served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, Sessions was nominated by Reagan for the U.S. District Court in the autumn of 1985. Sessions had prosecuted three civil rights workers for voter fraud, but the so-called "Marion Three'' were acquitted. Civil rights groups citied the case as evidence of Sessions' bias.

Thomas Figures, an African-American assistant U.S. attorney, also alleged that Sessions had called him "boy.''

ABC News recently contacted Figures, who said: "I tand by my testimony and I don't know if anyone has questioned theveracity or the truth of it. And I don't really care."

In addition, Figures had said years ago that Sessions ''stated that he believed the
N.A.A.C.P., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Operation PUSH, and the National Council of Churches were all un-American organizations teaching Anti-American values."

Hebert echoed that testimony, saying that Sessions had referred to both the NAACP and ACLU as "un-American" and "Communist-inspired" groups that "forced civil rights down the throats of people."

Sessions allowed that he "may have said something about the NAACP being un-American or Communist,'' but "meant no harm by it.''

The criticism grew fierce.

"'Mr. Sessions is a throwback to a shameful era which I know both black and white Americans thought was in our past," Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said during Sessions' bid for confirmation. "It is inconceivable to me that a person of this attitude is
qualified to be a U.S. attorney, let alone a U.S. federal judge. He is, I believe, a disgrace to the Justice Department and he should withdraw his nomination and resign his position.''

Sessions, ABC News notes, recently said that Kennedy's speech "was the
most unkind thing that has ever been said about me. It was exceedingly painful to hear someone of that prominence make that statement, and it was hurtful because it wasn't true."

The Judiciary Committee refused his nomination in 1986.

Sessions recently told the Birmingham News: "I really didn't feel like that was a fair process and that I had the kind of opportunity to get my message out effectively. And sometimes it's a gotcha thing. It has been for others, not just me, in which the
explanation is sort of buried. We shouldn't do that.''

Sotomayor's hearings should prove interesting.