Rep. Clyburn on His New Book “The First Eight” and the Government Shutdown Deal

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, since coming into office, the Trump administration has been waging a war on DEI, calling into question the hard work of many who shaped the United States. Take one American cemetery, World War II cemetery in the Netherlands, where a display once commemorated the black soldiers tasked with burying thousands of American troops. But in March, that display was taken down by a federal commission on grounds of, quote, “interpretive content.” 

Now, in the face of acts like these, Congressman Jim Clyburn has written a new book profiling the pioneering black politicians of South Carolina to whom he attributes his own career success. Clyburn was the first African-American to represent South Carolina since 1897, and his book, “The First Eight,” focuses on the trailblazing black lawmakers from his own state. He’s speaking to Hari Sreenivasan about the parallels between the battle for democracy in the past and present.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Christiane, thanks, Representative Jim Clyburn, thanks so much for joining us. This is not a traditional political memoir. You chose to turn to history to the eight Black Congressmen who were elected to represent South Carolina before you, and then you also weaved in some of your personal reflections. Why take this route?

REP. JAMES CLYBURN: Well, I thought about these eight people for a long, long time. My father when I was a youngster, made me learn everything about Robert Smalls. I knew that Robert Smalls was born enslaved that he had escaped slavery and had become a member of the state legislature and of Congress. And I didn’t know a whole lot about the others. But my dad insisted that every day after we finished doing homework, we had to share with him a current event. So I got involved in and interested in politics at a very early age. 

And so right after I wrote my regular memoir, I received visitors in my office one day. And one of them asked me about these eight pictures up on my wall. When I explained who they were, one of ’em said to me, I thought you were the first. And I kind of playfully said No, before I was first there were eight. And I decided that day that maybe I would make my next book about these eight people. 

And I started really working on it leisurely. And then the 2020 election happened. And I started seeing what was going on up in Michigan, Pennsylvania, down in Georgia, trying to develop these alternative electors for the presidential election. And I recognized from these people’s lives what was going on. We were trying to get the next president certified. And the former president, or the president who had just lost, was then trying to get that certification nullified. Exactly what led to the demise of the careers of these eight people. And so I changed the direction, started the book over, and decided to focus on tying their experiences to what we are experiencing now. And quite frankly the parallels are very eerie.

SREENIVASAN: I wanna talk about the parallels, but I also want to introduce our audience to a couple of these characters that you write about. Let’s start with Robert Small, who you discussed briefly. You say, “By my estimation, Robert Smalls, the only bonafide civil war hero of the eight and one of only two blacks, to serve as a delegate to the 1868 and 1895 Constitutional conventions, which granted then revoked Black political and civil rights in the state, lived the most consequential life of any South Carolinian. In your memory.” I mean, that is already consequential in itself what you just described, but how did he get to that position? How did he escape?

CLYBURN: Well, it’s the most remarkable event, I think in the entire Civil War. Robert Smalls born enslaved. Mother got very concerned about him and his safety living in slavery. So she talked her owner John McGee in letting Robert Smalls go to Charleston to work. And all the income, of course, would go to the owner. 

And one day, while working on the waterfront, he had achieved some degree of some elevation among his peers. He was prancing around the ship one day and playfully threw on the captain’s hat. And one of his buddies said to him, You look remarkably like the captain under that hat. And that gave him an idea. And Robert Smalls started planning an escape using the people he worked with on the ship and his family. And they successfully absconded the prize ship of the Confederate army which was The Planter. And they sailed that Planter into freedom. 

He would, he then started serving in the Navy and became the first captain of a naval ship, the first African American captain in the Navy. 

So I tell young people all the time, as my dad used to tell me, There’s nothing new under the sun. So when we start talking about all these first’s today, Robert Smalls, to me, was the first and maybe the only real hero of the Civil War. The first Black captain in that war. Served 10 years in the South Carolina legislature. And after that served 10 years in the United States Congress. All of that wrapped up in one person. 

Now, he escaped in May — in August of that year, Robert Smalls was in Washington, D.C. to try to convince Lincoln, President Lincoln, to allow blacks to serve in that war. Because they were forbidden. He convinced Lincoln and Lincoln authorized him to go back to South Carolina, recruit 5,000 Black soldiers, which later became 40,000. And Abraham Lincoln himself said, But for those 40,000 soldiers and others after them, that war would’ve been lost by the Union.

SREENIVASAN: You write in the book “Faith is a through line in American history, particularly in the Black community.” Who was Richard Caine? Why does he stand out? Why does he resonate so personally for you?

CLYBURN: Richard Caine was a native of West Virginia. His family moved to Ohio. And he felt a call to the ministry and was educated at Wilberforce University, the first private HBCU. But he became disenchanted with the Methodist Church that he was a pastor in. So he leftthat Methodist church, became an AME. And then he was sent here, to New York, and he became the pastor of Bridge Street AME Church over in Brooklyn, New York. 

But he tried to volunteer for the Union Army. And he and several others were turned down because they were not allowing Blacks to serve, and very explicitly said to blacks that, This was a white man’s war. And we have stipulated in the book this having been said. But he never gave up on it. And when the war was over he was sent to Charleston by the AME movement to rebuild Emanuel AME Church, which had been destroyed over the attempts by African Americans to escape. 1822, the church was burned down because of Denmark Vesey, 30 some odd people were hanged. And of course, he was so successful at revealing that church. They couldn’t hold all the people. So he started the second church Morris Brown AME Church, which I became a member of. And he was the first pastor of. 

But he did something that I warn people about today. He used his relationship with the church. He bought a newspaper that he published, and between the church and that newspaper, he built a political dynasty in South Carolina and became a very astute member of Congress, and was a founder of a HBCU down in Texas, and became the 14th Bishop of the AME Church.

SREENIVASAN: Given the election results just recently, do you think that the Democrats made a mistake in striking a deal, or at least the number of Democrats who crossed over to try to end the government shutdown, made a mistake?

CLYBURN: You know, no, I don’t. I’m not gonna vote for this bill simply because it does not go where I think it should go, but I don’t think it was a mistake. I think that what we have to do is balance interest here. We got the SNAP benefits, the problem with SNAP, we got that addressed. We got the problems with the women, infants, and children addressed. There are significant things that did get addressed in this deal. But everybody’s focusing on the one thing we didn’t get. 

You know, Lyndon Johnson — I should never forget — when we were passing Civil Rights Laws back in 1960, and when we passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in order to get the act passed, they took voting out of it, and they took housing out of it. And then it passed dealing only with employment. A lot of people got angry about that. And Lyndon Johnson famously said, Half loaf is better than no loaf. So let’s apply that to this. We may have gotten a half loaf. But that’s better than no loaf. 

SREENIVASAN: I wonder, you know, right now there’s a tremendous amount of disenchantment with how the federal government works, how responsive people feel government is. Look, we just are hopefully on the other side of a 40 plus day government shutdown. And I think there’s a lot of people from all sides of the political spectrum who are saying There’s gotta be something better than this. This isn’t what we voted for, just perpetual kind of gridlock and people throwing tantrums and deciding to stay in their corners. And in the middle are people who are suffering.

CLYBURN: There is something better. And working together, we can get to that something better. But you don’t get to that something better about dropping outta the process. You stay engaged in this process. And you can win it. It is almost like saying, you know, the first half is over and we are behind. We are losing. There’s still gonna be a second half. We still got legislation to address. We may not have gotten all that we wanted in this round. But we are gonna have it engaged again.

We doing appropriation bills and everybody keeps talking about the message. I think it’s the clear message now. People want the things that are great in this country to be affordable and accessible to them. And so what good does it do to have a good educational system if everybody can’t afford it? Same thing with healthcare. We got a great healthcare system. But is it affordable for everybody? The election over in New Jersey, the big issue in that election — aside from that tunnel, we’ll see — cost of energy. And the Democrats said, We going to make energy costs affordable. We going to freeze the cost of energy. And, and everybody said she might squeak by. She went by 13 points. Down in Virginia is all about childcare and education, making all these things affordable. She won it by 14 points. And here we got a mayor, a new mayor of New York. He won trying to make housing affordable. So this thing of the president saying, There’s a hoax. Let him keep talking. You keep walking.

SREENIVASAN: Congressman, finally, you know, you, you close out your book with the state motto of South Carolina “While I breathe, I hope.” And I wonder, what is it that gives you this eternal optimism considering that you’ve literally been on the front lines of so many times where people would give up? What spurs that sense of purpose and kind of maybe mission in the morning when you say, We can still make something better? Because there’s a lot of people who are kind of looking for that hope.

CLYBURN: Well, you know, I remember questioning my dad about just what you’re talking about. I had a real problem. My father was a fundamentalist minister. I questioned a lot about what he was preaching and what I was living. Never so forget one day he said to me, Son the darkest point of the night is that moment just before dawn. And that has so much meaning to me. And it still has. I know how dark it may seem, but we could very well be in that moment just before dawn. So you don’t give up on the process. You keep pressing forward. 

And so I say to young people all the time, Robert Smalls did not give up. When Robert Smalls got to Congress, Robert Smalls was indicted on trumped up charges, and was put in jail and was offered relief if he would just get outta politics. He refused. He refused. And so I say the young people no matter how dark it is today, no matter how difficult the task may be, you can’t give up on this process, especially if you’ve got children and you’ve got grandchildren. So if you gonna quit, so then what’s gonna be their future? So if they don’t have a future. It must not be, because you didn’t do your darnness to make sure that they have.

SREENIVASAN: Representative Jim Clyburn from South Carolina, also the author of “The First Eight.” Thanks so much for your time.

CLYBURN: Thank you very much for having me.