Sessions helped wipe out Ku Klux Klan in Alabama – Wow, that’s not what you’re hearing, is it?

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., spent a considerable amount of his time as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama pressing civil rights lawsuits. He also assisted local prosecutors in a case that helped wipe out the Ku Klux Klan in the state.

Yet accusations about the Alabama senator’s past on racial issues have become a focal point for those opposing his confirmation to be the next attorney general after President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

NAACP President Cornell Brooks, in a written statement, accused Sessions of having “disdain for our nation’s civil rights laws.”

A letter to Senate leaders from member organizations of the Leadership Conference, a coalition of civil rights groups, asserted: “Sessions has a 30-year record of racial insensitivity, bias against immigrants, disregard for the rule of law, and hostility to the protection of civil rights that makes him unfit to serve as the attorney general of the United States.”

But the same letter goes on to say:

Senator Sessions’ record does include some positive actions. For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center … acknowledged that he was helpful in the center’s successful effort to sue and bankrupt the Ku Klux Klan following its role in the 1981 lynching death of Michael Donald.

The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to hold a confirmation hearing for Sessions in the new year even before Trump, who picked him to run the Justice Department, is sworn in as president Jan. 20.

The old accusations against Sessions, 70, played a key role in stopping his 1986 nomination to serve as U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Alabama.

Sessions is no racist and such attacks are a means of personalizing policy differences, said Horace Cooper, co-chairman of Project 21, a black conservative group, and adjunct fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research.

“All I’ve seen from Jeff Sessions is that he has followed the law as the Supreme Court has defined it and has not attempted to make law,” Cooper told The Daily Signal. “It’s proper for a U.S. attorney general or a state attorney general to make decisions based on the law, whether the law is popular or not.”

Responding to a question from the Judiciary Committee asking him to describe the 10 most significant cases he litigated, Sessions wrote that five regarded racial matters, such as voting rights, desegregation, and prosecution of a Klan-motivated murder. He also explained his role in a fraud case against a civil rights activist, who was acquitted.

‘First Voter Suppression Lawsuit’: US v. Conecuh County

Sessions said in response to the Judiciary Committee’s questionnaire that he understood a case out of Conecuh County “was the first voter suppression lawsuit ever instituted by the United States Department of Justice.”

He added: “I am honored to have been part of it.”

Voting Rights: US v. Dallas County Commission

In July 1982, Sessions co-filed an 80-page brief with the voting section of the Civil Rights Division that was a “finding of fact” stating that at-large districts used to elect county commissioners and school board members denied blacks full participation in the voting process.

The case dragged on until 1988, when a court ordered the county to have five districts for electing board members, with three containing majority black populations.

“Along with the [American Civil Liberties Union], my office continued to support extensive litigation,” Sessions wrote in reply to the questionnaire.

Prosecuting an Activist: US v. Turner

This is the case Sessions’ critics eagerly point to, largely because it involved bringing charges against Albert Turner, a former adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and mostly because Turner was acquitted.

The matter began in 1982, when Perry County District Attorney Roy Johnson urged a federal investigation after concluding the matter was too large for his office.

An Alabama grand jury, which was majority black and led by a black foreman, issued a report saying they were convinced “a fair election is being denied the citizens of Perry County, both black and white.”

The grand jury report asked the Justice Department for “vigorous prosecutions” and a federal monitor for elections.

However, the Civil Rights Division declined to investigate, and so did Sessions.

“We expected the local investigation would have caused all campaigners to re-evaluate their activities and conform to the law,” Sessions wrote in the Judiciary Committee questionnaire.

In 1984, when nearly every candidate for Perry County public office was black, several black candidates told Johnson, the district attorney, that they thought the election was being stolen.

Johnson, Sessions wrote, told him “extremely large numbers of absentee ballots were being taken to a central headquarters where the ballots were being altered to ensure that they were being marked by candidates endorsed by Turner.”

Sessions said he didn’t want to be involved, but reluctantly asked an FBI special agent to observe the post office where the activity allegedly was occurring.

Sessions said the FBI saw Turner and his wife Evelyn drop off more than 300 ballots for mailing at the post office, and also saw Turner associate Spencer Hogue Jr. deposit another 170 ballots on the same night. These ballots made up the majority of the 729 absentee ballots cast in the county.

The FBI’s investigation determined that at least 75 of the 729 ballots had erasures or alterations, and 25 individuals said they hadn’t authorized changes that the Turners and Hogue allegedly made.

Sessions’ office charged the Turners and Hogue with 29 counts, including mail and election fraud. The defense argued that the practice was legal and voters gave permission to make changes. A jury acquitted all three on all charges.

Taking Down the Klan: Hays v. Alabama
Henry F. Hays was the son of Ku Klux Klan leader Bennie Jack Hays. In 1981, the younger Hays and an accomplice slit the throat of Michael Donald, a 19-year-old black man, and hanged his body from a tree.

Sessions said his office worked with state prosecutors to bring the case and to ensure a death sentence.

Donald’s family won a $7 million civil judgment against the Klan, which essentially bankrupted the organization in the state.

Desegregation in Mobile County
In a case that began in 1963, parents filed a class action lawsuit against the Mobile County Commission, asserting that it continued to unconstitutionally segregate public schools. After numerous court rulings, the parties entered a consent decree.

“More than a decade after the district court approved the consent decree on behalf of the United States, and with the support of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, papers were filed with the court contesting the legally binding effect of the consent decree and alleging the school district had yet to fully integrate,” Sessions wrote.

As U.S. attorney, Sessions co-filed briefs in 1981, 1983, and 1985 with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division contending the school system was not fully integrated and challenging the validity of some of the consent decree.

The federal district court rejected part of the argument by Sessions and the agency, but still found the schools were not properly integrated.

Other Voting Rights Enforcement

In addition to cases Sessions highlighted in the Judiciary Committee questionnaire, Trump’s presidential transition team notes other cases.

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