By Sari Horwitz

African American and other civil rights leaders infuriated over the stalled confirmation vote on Loretta E. Lynch, the first black woman to be nominated for attorney general, are casting the delay as an issue with racial overtones.

They are urging the Senate to act immediately and end a process that has lasted more than five months.

Activists across the country are three days into a hunger strike over the Senate’s failure to vote on Lynch. African American groups have also protested outside the offices of senators who oppose her leading the Justice Department. And one Democratic senator has compared the holdup to the treatment of civil rights activist Rosa Parks in the segregated South, saying that Lynch has been “asked to sit in the back of the bus when it comes to the Senate calendar.”

“The question we all want answered is: Why is it impossible to have a simple constitutional vote on the floor of the Senate?” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, the president of the National Action Network, which is organizing the hunger strike. “Why is it that the first black female nominee is being treated in such a disrespectful and inexcusable manner?”

Read More Race creeps into debate over stalled nomination for attorney general – The Washington Post.