Eric Holders legacy
Outgoing United States attorney general Eric Holder. (FP)
As Eric Holder spent some of his last days in office meeting with Barbados Governor General and Prime Minister recently, a key thing has become clear about Americas first black Attorney General.
It is that the tenure of the Barbadian-American as the fourth longest serving head of the United States Justice Department means different things to different people.
To Americans who cherish freedom and respect for civil and human rights, the son of Eric and Miriam Holder is a champion, their darling, if you will.
When the history of his tenure is written, Eric Holder will ultimately be recognised as one of the finest attorneys general this country has ever known, said Sherrilyn Ifill, President of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People Legal Defence Fund.
US Congressman John Lewis, a Democrat of Georgia and a former aide of the late Dr Martin Luther King Jr, agreed.
His resignation is a great loss for any American seeking justice in our society, said Lewis, a revered icon of the civil rights movement.
And as Ambassador Andy Young, the first black person to serve as the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations and a former Mayor of Atlanta saw Holder, the man with Bajan roots is an excellent judicial candidate for the US Supreme Court.
But Darrell Issa, chairman of the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee, paints a different picture of the AG.
Eric Holder is the most divisive US Attorney General in history, said Issa whose dislike of Holder apparently knows little, if any bounds. For it was Issa, a Republican conservative of California, who sought to get Congress to hold the AG in contempt.
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Eric Holders legacy