Jeff Sessions’ black defender unfazed by 'Uncle Tom' label

[TomSea]

Jeff Sessions’ black defender unfazed by 'Uncle Tom' label

By Hannah Allam
hallam@mcclatchydc.com
WASHINGTON

As a black man from Alabama, Willie Huntley Jr. has deep reverence for civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, an organizer of the landmark marches from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. So Huntley got a little emotional earlier this month when he found himself in the same Senate hearing room as Lewis.

“When he walked through the door, I melted,” Huntley recalled. “I was thinking, ‘This man shook hands with Martin Luther King Jr.,’ and I was just in awe.”

The awkward twist to this encounter is that Huntley and his hero were in the same room, but on opposing sides of the issue at hand: the confirmation of Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican whom President Donald Trump has nominated for attorney general.

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