Mobile, January 6 (RHC)-- In the U.S. city of Mobile, Alabama, NAACP National President Cornell William Brooks and five other civil rights leaders were arrested during a sit-in at the office of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, demanding he withdraw his name for consideration for attorney general. 

Trump’s pick of Sessions for the position has drawn widespread outrage due to Sessions’s opposition to the Voting Rights Act, support for anti-immigration legislation and history of making racist comments, which included reportedly saying he thought the Ku Klux Klan was "OK until I found out they smoked pot." 

Sessions has also called the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP -- the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People -- "un-American" and "Communist-inspired."  In 1986, Sessions was denied confirmation for a federal judgeship by a Republican-controlled Senate committee over his racist comments. 

The sit-in came as more than 1,000 law school professors sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to reject Sessions’s confirmation, writing: "Nothing in Senator Sessions’ public life since 1986 has convinced us that he is a different man than the 39-year-old attorney who was deemed too racially insensitive to be a federal district court judge." 

Sessions’s confirmation hearing is scheduled for January 10 and 11, followed by the confirmation hearing of former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson for secretary of state, who will go before the Senate on January 11 and 12.  Tillerson stepped down as Exxon CEO on January 1, receiving a $180 million retirement package. 

On January 11, Trump says he’ll also give his first formal news conference in nearly six months. His last press conference was in July, when he called on Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s e-mail servers.  Trump claims that in his upcoming news conference he’ll reveal "things that other people don’t know" about the alleged hacking of the U.S. elections.