Rep. James Clyburn Reflects on Rep. John Lewis’ Legacy

REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC): Well, we were sitting on the floor one day, not long after this whole incident. We saw this breakthrough, Black Lives Matter finally breaking through. You saw all the support coming forth. And John said to me, it feels different this time. And we were so concerned a couple days later when all of a sudden we heard this cry of defund the police. We both reminisced about what, burn, baby, burn, that slogan did for us back in the 1960s. So, John was very concerned, and we talked about not allowing this movement, this momentum, to be dissipated over sloganary (ph). And that’s why both of us spoke out so strongly against defund the police. We didn’t want to see another headline destroy another movement. Headlines often get in the way of headway, and that’s what we wanted to see, headway, not headlines.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Well, let me ask you then, do you think you are making enough headway and not generating the kind of headlines that you don’t want to generate?

CLYBURN: Well, I think that people now see what John was talking about, and I have noticed that the purpose for all of these activities seem to be talked about now. People are rallying around a new Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act. John nearly lost his life back in 1965, and as a result of those activities on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, we got the Voting Rights Act in August of 1965. Now, the Supreme Court seven years ago cut the heart out of that act. John spent the last seven years trying to follow the Supreme Court’s roadmap to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. And so, I would think that we would do John justice if we were to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of 2020 and restore the efficacy of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.