On the eve of U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearing to be President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general, a group of African-American pastors from all over the country gathered at the Family Research Council to defend the senator against baseless accusations of racism and bigotry.
The Rev. Dean Nelson, FRC’s African-American outreach director and chairman of the board of the Douglass Leadership Institute, opened the meeting with a brief prepared statement:
Americans are living in a toxic climate where the serious charge of racism is carelessly leveled against anyone with whom the left disagrees. We are here today to make it perfectly clear that these accusations against Senator Jeff Sessions are baseless.
Senator Jeff Sessions is not a bigot. His history in public services refutes that baseless allegation. From insisting on capital murder charges for the murderer of a black teenager to spearheading the honoring of the mother of the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks, Senator Sessions has proven he is no bigot.
The group gathered in Washington, D.C., represented churches all over the U.S., as well as prominent pastors from Alabama. Among those on hand for the event were:
- Bishop Harry Jackson, High Impact Leadership Coalition
- Troy Towns, Rivers Edge Church (Montgomery, Alabama)
- William Green, Fresh Anointing House of Worship (Montgomery, Alabama)
- Bishop Jim Low, Guiding Light Church (Birmingham, Alabama)
- Ralph Chittams Sr., Frederick Douglass Foundation
- William Merritt, Secretary of North Carolina SCLC.
“Sessions helped desegregate schools in Alabama—a huge issue. Also, he got the death penalty for a KKK murderer,” Bishop Harry Jackson said. “I think that would qualify you as someone who is eliminating racism, not one who is perpetrating racism.” {eoa}
