Mother Jones - Community organizers, led by Albert Turner, a former aide to Martin
Luther King Jr., started teaching African Americans to vote absentee in
order to boost turnout, particularly among elderly voters struggling to
make it to the polls, which in some places were open for only four
hours. In 1982, local candidates backed by Turner and his allies finally
won. Two years later, Sessions began investigating absentee ballot use
by African Americans in five rural counties where black voters'
influence was ascendant. He charged Turner, Turner's wife, and another
organizer—known as the Marion Three—with mail and voter fraud for
allegedly tampering with ballots. During the trial, his case fell apart,
and the jury found the three activists not guilty.
The case became a major issue for Sessions a year later, when President Ronald Reagan nominated him to a federal judgeship. A Senate committee blocked his nomination amid allegations of racism stemming in part from his targeting of the Marion Three. To his critics, Sessions' handling of the case was as damning as the fact that he had prosecuted it. He could have convened a grand jury in Selma, just down the road from Marion. Instead, it was convened in Mobile, 160 miles away, where the jury would be whiter...
Shortly after Sessions was denied the federal judgeship, his office
charged two African Americans who played a role in his confirmation
hearings: one who had testified against him, and another whom Sessions
had allegedly called a racial slur. The first was acquitted; the second
spent more than five years in prison but continues to deny any
wrongdoing. "I considered that, 'How dare you? You testified against
me,'" says Sanders. Sessions charged at least half a dozen Democratic
politicians in Mobile, often during campaigns and with questionable
evidence, according to a report in the Guardian.
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