Henry Sanders

Henry "Hank" Sanders (born October 28, 1942) is an American attorney and politician who served as a member of the Alabama Senate from 1983 to 2018. He is married to Faya Ora Rose Touré. He is the longest-serving chair of a legislative budget committee in Alabama, having first been named to chair of the Senate Finance & Taxation Committee in January 1996 and serving in it for four consecutive terms. Early life and education Hank Sanders is the second of 13 children born to Ola Mae and Sam Sanders of Baldwin County, Alabama. He first received his nickname "The Rock" by his mother because of his solid, steady and reliable nature, and that nickname has been adopted as a slogan in his political campaigns for the Alabama Senate. He graduated from Douglasville High School, Talladega College and Harvard Law School, established a law practice (his own firm, Chestnut, Sanders, Sanders, and Pettaway), and served as the first African American State Senator from the Alabama Black Belt. At the age of twelve, Sanders was inspired to become a lawyer after reading about Thurgood Marshall in a magazine article. Hank Sanders graduated near the top of his high school class in 1960 and college class in 1967; winning the Catherine Wardell Award after his freshman year as the "Student who contributed most to Talladega College the previous year". He received a special scholarship to Boston University for his junior year and Harvard Summer School after his sophomore year. He attended Harvard Law School on a Felix Frankfurter Scholarship "for poor young men who show great promise" and served as President of Harvard Black Law Students Association. In 2008, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Talladega College.