This year’s Warmoth T. Gibbs Lecture brought House majority whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC)  to the yard.

Clyburn, who is the third ranking Democrat in Congress, was the keynote speaker for the 20th anniversary of the event and centered his speech around the current state of affairs in American politics and took time to reflect on the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination.

Members of the media had the chance to speak with Clyburn before his speech and got asked the 6th Congressional district representative some serious questions about the current political environment.

Asking any Democrat what they think about the Clinton and Obama campaigns has become second nature and like a true politican the former head of the Congressional Black Caucas answered the questions but left the real answer up in the air.”Well they both have the same pros and cons. Hillary Clinton, no matter what anybody says to you to the contrary, there are people who hold her gender against her and no matter what anyone says to the contrary, there are people who hold Barack’s race against him and that’s a con for both of them,” said Clyburn. “Believe it or not, she will energize women in a way women have not been energized before and he will energize blacks in a way that Blacks have never been energized before.”

When asked who he supports he shined light on why he’s been re-elected seven times.”I tell people that I am not public in my support, I cannot tell you that I am undecided, I’m not,” said Clyburn.

“I voted on  January 26 in the Democratic primary in South Carolina and I voted for somebody so I can’t be undecided I’m just undeclared.”As both campaigns seem to have settled down, Clyburn seemed to happy about how they were playing out.

“I’ve been saying this for a week now, I think the calls for her to drop out are ill advised, for instance North Carolina hasn’t voted yet,” said Clyburn. “You shouldn’t shut the process off, I’ve been saying nobody should drop out they should all cut it out and by that I mean run your campaigns and run your campaigns they’ve been running the past three days.”

He continued, “Run positive campaigns, get your supporters organized  and stop all of this foolishness about whether or not Barack Obama is responsible for what his preacher says.”

Clyburn also weighed in on why keeping such a clean slate is a must in his position.”The role of majority whip is to gather the votes on any issue that comes to Congress. For any bill to become law I have to have 218 votes, if I have 233 Democrats and I only have 15 votes to spare,” said Clyburn.

With so little wiggle  room in terms of votes, Clyburn and others have to make sure that they don’t step on the toes of their colleagues in Congress.

During his time as chair of the Congressional Black Caucas, Clyburn made environmental justice, desegregating the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals which covers S.C., N.C., Va., W. Va. and Md., which had a high number of African American constituents but had never had a black judge to sit on the 4th circuit.

Clyburn spoke about Mel Watt’s broad vision for the Black caucus which was to eliminate disparities between blacks and whites.

Pork barrel spending, which occurs where a representative spends money for his constituents for the direct benefit of their financial support or their votes, was an early question.

“One man’s pork is another man’s beef,” said Clyburn. “Now when you hear people talking about pork, most times these are people that live in gated communities, they have clean water to drink, they have all the amenities that they want and you never hear them say that its pork when a Bear Stearns is about go under and the federal government steps in to put up 30 billion dollars to keep them from going under.”

Clyburn continued, “That’s not wasteful spending but if Main Street is going under, if there is now a sewage program in low-income areas, highly populated African-American communities and you get money to put in sewage and put in water then you say its pork.”Students seemed impressed with his lecture style, informal yet insightful.”Rep. Clyburn’s lecture was meaningful ansd insight,” said senior Brandon Bellamy.”He has an intimate knowledge of politics, how it affects people of color and a dedication to serve those who have been systematically underrepresented.”

Warmoth T. Gibbs, the lectures’ namesake, was president of A&T College from 1955 to 1960, prior to that he received two degrees from Harvard University and was a charter member of the Beta Chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.Clyburn, also a member of Omega Psi Phi, graduated from South Carolina State in 1962  and spoke about the political atmosphere and activism that was prevalent on his campus and other black campuses during his time in college.

“I organized the first sit-ins in South Carolina,” said  Clyburn. “On that day, I suspect it was about two or three months after that (February 1, 1960), that we did the first sit-in in Orangeburg.

Clyburn, who was also a memeber of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee or “Snick,” an organization that was worked to help Southern blacks on a grass-roots level, says civil rights and the Vietnam War brought on the activism that people saw during that time.

“I was in the group that came up to Shaw University in Raleigh, a lot of people don’t realize it but “Snick” got started at Shaw a lot of people will tell you it started in Atlanta.” October 13-15 , 1960 were three days that Clyburn will never forget.”I always remember that day because that was the day I met Martin Luther King for the first time,” said Clyburn.

Clyburn thought it was interesting that on no other anniversary of MLK’s death had he seen the kind of media attention and couldn’t come up with an answer why but managed to compare the current political landscape to the past.

“I saw someone a couple nights ago replaying some of King’s speeches in opposition of the war and one guy says ‘I’m not too sure that if King had made those speeches today in the era of YouTube and you were to take one 15-second soundbite out of his speech and loop it around the world the way you did the Jeremiah Wright speech, there are people who think that King would never have a holiday in his honor’ and that’s probably true,” said Clyburn.

Students and alums appreciated the opportunity to ask a high ranking member of government serious questions about the politcal world we live in today.”They were down to earth,” said A. Levar Bell, a High Point native and president of the History Scholars

“Intellectual yet interactive, I feel like the audience could understand just exactly what he was saying and why he was saying it and he answered their questions to the exact.””Our student leaders should respect his knowledge of political history and use it as a springboard to the future,” said Bellamy.

• Mike McCray