Jeff Sessions and Justice Department Mark MLK Holiday

After the federal holiday Monday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivered an address for the the 2018 Department of Justice Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative Program Tuesday.

“Dr. King was never elected to office or held any government title. But he helped transform our legal system by inspiring some of the transformative laws that we in this building enforce today,” Sessions said in his prepared remarks to the crowd at main DOJ’s Great Hall that included Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand, and FBI Director Chris Wray.

Sessions cited the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 as legal accomplishments King helped inspire. “It is important for us who enforce these laws to remember how things were before they were enacted,” he said, continuing with his own experiences of that pre-civil rights movement era:

When I was growing up, I regularly saw raw, unvarnished discrimination against a whole people because of the color of their skin. I grew up attending all-white, public segregated schools. I saw evidence of discrimination virtually every day. Schools were separate and clearly unequal.  There was open wage discrimination.  Police and Sheriff’s offices were often all or virtually all white. Black citizens were often, blatantly, and systematically denied the right to vote.  African-Americans were denied the very basic rights of citizenship.

That was a fact. It was not that long ago. I can remember riding on an all-white school bus and passing an all-black school bus.  Just one look at that bus was enough to know that separate was not equal. We were living under a system that was corrupt and immoral.

Sessions later focused on the Christian and American underpinnings of King’s movement and message, saying:

Dr. King exposed that system for what it was—to the country and to the world— and helped end it by putting it to shame. He was inspired by two sources above all others: the Founders of this country and the Christian faith that he preached. He preached no new commandment, but that which was from the beginning. He gave new vigor and new expression to timeless ideas recorded centuries before in our Declaration of Independence and on the well-worn pages of his Bible.

“Though he was taken from us, no assassin could silence him. His voice still echoes in the laws and institutions he influenced—including the Department of Justice. Today we celebrate and we remember,” Session concluded. “… Then we will go forth to act.”

Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, an old colleague of Sessions’ who served under President George W. Bush, helped spearhead the Enron prosecutions and was recently considered a frontrunner to replace James Comey at FBI, also delivered a keynote speech.