Black activists are stepping up their opposition to Donald Trump's Cabinet picks and planning a major rally just six days before the president-elect's inauguration, The Hill reports.
The Rev. Al Sharpton told the website he is organizing the rally at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington on Jan. 14. and said it would "put the Democrats on notice that we expect them to use the nomination hearings to really go after" Trump's nominations.
The rally is scheduled to take place two days before the public holiday commemorating King.
"Our focus is not President Trump, who we don't think we can turn around," Sharpton told The Hill. "Our focus is that the Democrats should not weaken, and so weaken everything that Dr. King achieved and everything that President Obama has achieved."
Sharpton is concentrating on Sen. Jeff Sessions, who was nominated by Trump to head the Justice Department, according to The Hill, which says the Alabama Republican was "rejected for a federal judgeship in 1986 amid accusation of racism, which he denied."
Also sparking concern for some, is the selection of Ben Carson as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Carson, who ran against Trump in the early presidential primaries, is a staunch conservative and the first African-American named to Trump's Cabinet.
The Hill notes Carson last year opposed an Obama administration regulation that was designed to take on persistent house segregation.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, noted Carson had "lambasted the Department's fair lending mission, calling our civil rights laws 'mandated social engineering schemes.'"
The New York Post reports Trump recently surprised Sharpton by calling him.
"We did talk briefly," Sharpton said. "I was surprised and candid about our sharp disagreements and so was he."
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