(CNN) – At the commemoration of the historic Selma to Montgomery civil rights march, Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday expressed guilt for not joining the Alabama demonstration nearly half a century ago.
The vice president also used the opportunity to lament the dozens of voting restrictions proposed by states in the last couple of years and argued against a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that's now being heard in the Supreme Court.
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In his speech, Biden said he watched the first bloody march as a senior in college. The scene, he said, gave him heavy convictions.
"I regret - and although it's not a part of what I'm supposed to say - I apologize it took me 48 years to get here," Biden said, shortly before joining a crowd to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. "I should have been here. It's one of the regrets that I have and many in my generation have."
The vice president, walking arm-in-arm with notable civil rights activists such as Rep. John Lewis, led the crowd of thousands across the same bridge where police met protestors with brutal force nearly 50 years ago.
"Most of us thought that the hatred the viciousness the bigotry that we'd seen in our own states had at least subsided," Biden said, reflecting on watching the protests. "What we saw was entrenched hostility and prejudice coming face to face with undaunted courage and resolve - a resolve so powerful that it inspired the Congress and the nation to support the Voting Rights Act just four months later."
Biden was elected to the Senate just seven years out of college at the age of 29. Leading up to his first run, he said, "nothing shaped my consciousness (more)...than what happened here in Selma."
This appearance was Biden's first at the tribute. President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came to Selma in 2007 when they were both seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Biden, himself, has not ruled out a 2016 presidential bid.
While Obama did not accompany Biden on Sunday, the president made headlines when he mentioned Selma and other landmark events in the civil rights movement during his second inauguration speech in January.
"We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths - that all of us are created equal - is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall," he said.
On March 7, 1965, police clashed with nearly 600 marchers in Selma, forcing them back from the Edmund Pettus Bridge with batons and tear gas. On a day that later became known as "Bloody Sunday," police said they were enforcing then-Gov. George Wallace's ban on demonstrations.
Carrying on the march, the demonstrators ultimately made it to the state's capital, Montgomery, on March 24. The vice president applauded those who took part in the demonstrations, saying they helped "liberate the soul of the United States of America."
"You lost the battle that day, but you won the war," he told the audience at the foot of the bridge. "And in the process you did something that could never be changed: you won the hearts and minds of your fellow citizens all across America."
In a separate speech earlier in the day, Biden added the fight still continues in 2013, pointing to a series of voting laws proposed during the 2012 election and warning of the current case at the Supreme Court involving the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The court will decide this year on challenges to Section 5, a part of the act that gives the federal government open-ended oversight of states and localities, mostly in the South, with a history of voter discrimination. As the law now stands, changes in voting laws and procedures in all or parts of 16 covered states must be "pre-cleared" with Washington.
Read more: Justices offer split views on Voting Rights Act enforcement
Conservative justices on Wednesday suggested it was a constitutionally unnecessary vestige of the civil rights era. The provision was reauthorized by Congress in 2006 for another 25 years and officials in Shelby County, Alabama, subsequently filed suit, saying the monitoring was overly burdensome and unwarranted.
But advocates for the provision say it's necessary to protect voting rights. Biden on Sunday lambasted the idea that Section 5 was even up for debate.
"Strom Thurmond voted for its reauthorization, and yet it's being challenged in Supreme Court of United States of America as we stand here today," Biden said.
The vice president also highlighted other states' attempts to pass voter identification laws last year during the election. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 32 states have some sort of voter identification law. Those states include Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas, places that also must get Voting Rights Act clearance before enacting new laws.
Democrats have said that such laws are politically motivated and intended to suppress the minority vote, given that fewer people in minority groups carry government-issued IDs. Republicans, meanwhile, make the case that such laws prevent fraud and protect the integrity of the system.
Biden acknowledged that Americans have changed during the last five decades but emphasized "we've come too far together to turn back." And in closing his remarks earlier Sunday, the vice president reiterated his regret of not traveling to walk in solidarity with the demonstrators in 1965.
"I still feel just a little bit of guilt; I was old enough," he said. "I could have been here. I should have been here, 48 years ago."
– CNN's Bill Mears contributed to this report.
From CNN Politics
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Biden's disgusting example of gratuitous sucking up should be incredibly offensive to all African Americans and anyone w/any sense of decency in them!
You couldn't be there in 1965 but you are there now when it's just as important and won't be as bloody. We need to defend our right to vote NOW!!
I am deeply embarrassed by this man that has failed the United States profoundly.
Everything that is an issue is a joke to Joe Biden and Barack Obama – every American is a joke to these men that will suffer nothing in the days to come.
Even their speech and purpose are lost – negligent, as this article demonstrates.
Not concerned a bit about United States citizens.
So – why do we pay them.
This clown is just as phony as his boss.
What is sad is that there are still alot of black people in this country who are so ignorant and blind of their own history that they act as though slavery and Jim Crow never happened in this country. The 2008 election and the recent election and the resurgence of the tea party on the scene for the first time in almost a century and the divisiveness by conservatives in this country since President Obama has emerged on the scene has demonstrated that we still have ways to go before we can say that our democracy is solidify in stone. Bigotry and racism is still very much rampant and alive in America today and unless we try to take a firm stand and deal with these ills in our society today, all that was fought for in the past would just be in vain because we would more or less be back to square one. As they say, those who ignore history are bound to repeat it.
Biden a Democrat wishes he was in Selma in '65? Really? So he could have supported all of his other racially charged Democrats WHO VOTED 'NO' ON THE '64 CIVIL RIGHTS BILL? Which is why BTW Lyndon Johnson went to the Republicans to get it passed.
Joe Biden, the quintessential politician, who panders to whatever group he is in front of for political purposes. Yet one of the Democratic Party's PAC funds in Kentucky is attacking GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell's wife for being Asian and Mr. Biden has not come down on those folks for their gutter racist remarks and bigotry. Joe Biden, speaks out of both sides of his mouth.
Come on folks. Move on. get over it. Stop living in the past and using the past as an excuse for total failure.
Our VP, what a sincere guy.
Mr. Biden you weren't there because you weren't a blowhard opportunists politicain yet! Your a hypocrite on the take useless shyster! You only care about Joe but you are in a job where you are supposed to do what is best for the country and you repeatedly fail to do your job!
Is it possible for a Dem to be any more blatant in pandering to people?
.
Must have been one of those positions that EVOLVED after they were elected that Joe and his boss are famous for.
Surprised that Joe didn't apologize for his part in slavery.....Yeah I know, he didn't own slaves...but while pandering.....
Gov George Wallace's ban on demonstrations was in violation of the 1st amendment which prohibits "the right to peaceably assemble". In other words, people have the right to gather in public to march, protest, demonstrate, carry signs and otherwise express their views in a nonviolent way, which is what the Selma march was all about.
As Blah Blah stated in an earlier post.....but he/she forgets that Jim Crowe was a DEMOCRAT BILL as was the KKK which was founded by DEMOCRATS. It's too bad that the African Americans today, as Clarence Thomas recently stated in St. Louis, "Entitlements directed towards African Americans are the new racism".
Look at the BRIGHT side, he didn't use his 'chains' comment...LOL
Appears Joe even has control over the 'soundoff', censors – SMH
Ancient Texan wrote:
Surprised that Joe didn't apologize for his part in slavery.....Yeah I know, he didn't own slaves...but while pandering.....
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Americans were not surprised that not one notable Republican participated, nor even dignified the event with a remark.
JamesS
Historically, Democrats were the party of slavery and the KKK (think Robert Byrd from WV). 39% of the House Democrats voted against the Civil Rights Act, while only 19% of Republicans did. In the Senate, 30% of Democrats voted against, while only 18% of Republicans did.
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And with the passage of the Voting Rights Act those sourthern "Dixiecrats" jumped ship to the Republican party. Today they are known as 'christian conservatives."
we require Photo iD to drive heck we even give them to Illegal immigrants. Why can we not require one to vote. This is the 21 century and we have the means to make getting an ID available and easy. If access is an issue make mobile ID stations though I doubt they are really required. racism is still in the US but to require ID is not a racist issue
Pandering much, Joe?????
very bold Joe., 50 years late, and completely safe politically.
what are doing today? thats relevant, and carries risk?,
nothing. you can bet on it.
Joe I never had an original thought Biden would never had gone to Selma. Democrats were largely against civil rights legistration. It was passed because of Republicans.
Joe would have been leading the filibuster
arkmark
we require Photo iD to drive heck we even give them to Illegal immigrants. Why can we not require one to vote. This is the 21 century and we have the means to make getting an ID available and easy.
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Because apparently any valid "Photo ID" is not valid. When your voter registration card is insufficient, that's a problem.
when i saw the headline, i thought loudmouth moron would be apologizing for his shotgun advice that got a man arrested..