MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript: Selma Anniversary

Interview

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Congressman Clyburn, thank you for coming on. What do you make of just
your chance now to talk about Selma and the movie and everything, this
whole commemoration, it`s coming back now, so strong?

REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D), SOUTH CAROLINA: Well, thank you so much for
having me, Chris.

And congratulations to you and your lovely wife. I wish her well.

MATTHEWS: Thank you.

CLYBURN: Look, this is about celebrating 50-year-old issue of voting.

Selma was all about the right to vote. You may recall, Selma came
after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed. And President Johnson,
thinking he had done enough with the Civil Rights Act, thought we could
postpone voting for a while. But you know that old adage, you know,
justice delayed is justice denied.

And so John Lewis and others, James Forman, in spite of the fact that
the movie "Selma" seemed to think that James Forman really didn`t want to
do the march, he wanted to do the march. He just didn`t want to be
overlooked for all the efforts they had been putting into Selma.

Everything -- things were taking place for a long time before Bloody
Sunday. And they were working, laying the foundation to try to get the
right to vote. And after that march, the Voting Rights Act was passed and
signed into law, I believe it was August 6.

So come August 6 of this year will be the 50th anniversary. And I
have been working with John Lewis, trying to do what we can with
Congressman Sensenbrenner and Congressman John Conyers. We are trying to
fix what the Supreme Court seems to have dismantled with that 1965 Voting
Rights Act.

I`m hopeful that, when we leave that bridge on Sunday and go back to
Washington in a week that all the 98 congresspeople who are there will all
sign on to Mr. Sensenbrenner`s amendments, so that we can restore what the
Roberts court has done to that 1965 Voting Rights Act.

MATTHEWS: Well, Congressman, you have been through all this, from the
hell of the past to what we have today.

But what do you make of these Republicans who, even though some of
them are going to show up with you as your colleagues this weekend down in
Selma, they`re out pushing all these voter suppression efforts, these voter
I.D. requirements in states like even Pennsylvania, where you have the
leadership of the Republican legislature, which dominates the legislature,
openly saying, we`re doing this to win votes, because if we can keep the
African-American from voting, especially older people, it`s going to help
us win statewide elections.

I mean, that seems to me completely in violation of the purpose of the
Voting Rights Act, this game they`re playing about voter I.D. cards.

CLYBURN: It is violation.

And, remember, just, as 50 years ago, it took the United States
Congress to respond in a way that was favorable to the protection of
people`s rights, it may take that again today, because, remember, these are
20-some-odd individual states who are doing those things.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

CLYBURN: I would hope that Congress would not just fix -- with the
amendments, fix the formula, but I would hope that we will go further with
John Lewis` bill, the Voter Empowerment Act, to take a look at all of these
schemes that they`re now developing, schemes which, if you look at them,
could be tantamount to poll taxes and other kinds of schemes that they used
back in the `40s and `50s to dilute and deny people`s votes.

MATTHEWS: Yes. Well said. Thank you so much. And it`s an important
weekend. And I wish you well down there, Congressman Jim Clyburn going
down to Selma. Thanks so much for joining us tonight, sir.

CLYBURN: Thank you so much for having me.

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