Black History Month: February 2, 2009

President Obama and Attorney General Holder.

On February 2, 2009, Eric Holder, by a vote of 75 to 21 became the nation’s first African-American Attorney General. Mr Holder earned a B.A. in American History and J.D from  the Columbia Law School in New York. He was also the first African American United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, having been appointed to that position by President Bill Clinton. In 1997, after the retirement of Jamie Gorelick, Clinton nominated Holder to be the Deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno. Holder was confirmed several months later in the Senate by a unanimous vote, and guess what, you already know, he was the first African American to hold that post.

On February 18, 2009, just days after his confirmation hearing for Attorney General, Mr. Holder gave a speech celebrating Black History Month. In the speech he called the U.S. “a nation of cowards.” While some applauded the speech, others were not so happy, to such an extent that President Obama had to “clarify” the AG’s statement, ” “I think it’s fair to say that if I had been advising my attorney general, we would have used different language…. I think the point that he was making is that we’re oftentimes uncomfortable with talking about race until there’s some sort of racial flare-up or conflict, and that we could probably be more constructive in facing up to the painful legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and discrimination.”

Attorney General Eric Holder speech, February 18, 2009.

 

 

 

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