House Majority Whip James Clyburn, who had been friends with late Rep. John Lewis since they met in October 1960, said they often talked about their concerns that the Black Lives Matter movement could be destroyed because of the calls to "defund the police."
"It reminds me of 'burn, baby, burn,' back in the 60s," the South Carolina Democrat told CNN's "New Day." "That's what destroyed our movement. We want to make sure that Black Lives Matter has the kind of success that we did not have back in the 1960s, and we can do that."
Clyburn said he and Lewis first met on the campus of Morehouse College when they were organizing the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee, and they would often reflect back on those days and talk about the current movement.
Clyburn said he last spoke with Lewis on July 11, and knew that he was probably speaking with his friend for the last time. Lewis died Friday after announcing in December he had advanced pancreatic cancer.
Meanwhile, Clyburn said that there are some concrete ways he wants to remember Lewis. For one, he wants the Senate to take up the voting rights bill that was sent to it and rename it the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of 2020 and send it back to the House "as a fitting and proper way" to remember the civil rights icon.
He also said he wants the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, which Lewis famously crossed during the Selma to Montgomery marches on March 7, 1965, renamed for his friend.
"I just believe that it would be fitting for the people of Selma, the people of Alabama to demonstrate that there is a new day in Alabama, if it were to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named after a guy who was the grand wizard of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan," said Clyburn, adding that he always found the bridge to be "morbid."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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