Eric Holder announced today that he will soon resign. Check out Time on how he will leave a legacy of civil rights activism: Attorney General Eric Holder showed in his second week in office that he planned to approach the job of top law enforcement officer differently. “In things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards, he said, in prepared remarks to Justice Department staff on Feb. 18, 2009. Through its work and through its example this Department of Justice, as long as I am here, must—and will—lead the nation to the ‘new birth of freedom’ so long ago promised by our greatest President. The remarks earned a backlash from the West Wing staff around President Barack Obama, but Holder’s attitude never changed, nor did his determination to use his office to highlight the injustices that continued to exist under his tenure. We’ve got to have the guts to say that these are issues that need to be fixed, he told a group of black journalists during a meeting at the White House last year. As news broke Thursday of Holder’s decision to retire after almost six years in the job as the first black leader of the Justice Department, civil rights activists were quick to praise him. No attorney general has demonstrated a civil rights record that is similar to Eric Holder’s, Al Sharpton, the head of the National Action Network, told reporters in Washington. -Erika
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 21:20:00 +0000
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