Jim Clyburn’s ‘The First Eight’ ties Reconstruction legacies to today’s party shifts
The First – In an excerpt from Jim Clyburn’s new book, he revisits South Carolina’s first Black members of Congress and explains why the parties’ racial politics changed—and why it matters now.
Reconstruction created the first openings for Black political leadership in the years after emancipation—and Jim Clyburn says the men who came through that era still shape how he thinks about power today.
In the introduction to his new book. “The First Eight: A Personal History of the Pioneering Black Congressmen Who Shaped a Nation. ” the South Carolina Democrat describes how he came to build a kind of living memorial to those predecessors.. When he became House majority whip in 2007. he requested that portraits of the first eight Black men elected to Congress from his state be hung in his conference room.. They came from the Library of Congress. and Clyburn says he has treasured them ever since. as a daily reminder of what he calls the “shoulders” he stands on.
The emotional spark for the project. he recalls. wasn’t only about history—it was about how quickly stories can disappear.. After the portraits were installed, a group came to meet with him, and one asked who the men were.. Clyburn says many of them assumed the first Black person to represent South Carolina in Congress would be sitting with them.. His answer—“Oh no.. Before I was first. there were eight”—captures the core argument of the excerpt: that achievement isn’t an accident. and that a public record can be misunderstood when it’s treated as singular rather than cumulative.
Clyburn’s approach is rooted in lived experience and formative background. which he says shaped each of the eight men’s approach to public service.. Some. including Richard Harvey Cain and Robert Brown Elliott. were Northerners who arrived in South Carolina as adults and did not grow up inside slave states.. Others—Robert Carlos De Large. Alonzo Jacob Ransier. and Thomas Ezekiel Miller—grew up in South Carolina with free Black parents. a circumstance Clyburn describes through the nineteenth-century category of “mulattos.” Still others. including Joseph Hayne Rainey. Robert Smalls. and George Washington Murray. were born enslaved in antebellum South Carolina and gained freedom through different pathways.
That variety matters to Clyburn’s larger framing of Reconstruction itself.. He defines it through a South Carolina timeline: beginning in parts of the state as early as the arrival of Union troops in late 1861. and running until federal troops departed in 1877.. In that window, he writes, African Americans gained their first real opportunity to serve in political office.. The first eight men. all Republicans. became visible leaders among South Carolina’s growing Black majority—yet their rise unfolded alongside what he calls intense opposition. including violence and fraud driven by a group often labeled “Conservative Democrats” or “Southern Democrats.”
A key thread in the excerpt is his decision to use the term “Redeemer Democrats” for those opponents. while also acknowledging how politically and personally complicated labels can be.. Clyburn says the phrase can sting. and he emphasizes respect for conservative Democratic friends and Southern family members even as he describes an agenda he sees as aimed at restoring white supremacy.. In that sense. the book is not only a historical narrative—it’s also an exercise in careful language and moral clarity.
Party realignment and why it still shapes American politics
For today’s readers. Clyburn identifies two questions he expects to hear: why the first eight Black members of Congress were Republicans. and why he—serving as a Democrat—came later.. His explanation is less about personal identity than about how American political parties changed over time.. He points out that in the nineteenth century, the parties stood for very different positions than they do now.. Republicans were formed in 1854 in the lead-up to the Civil War and were broadly associated with anti-slavery politics tied to Abraham Lincoln. while Democrats drew much of their strength from the pro-slavery South.
He then traces how racial political loyalty shifted through the twentieth century. culminating in modern alignments that. in his account. reflect civil and political rights more than earlier party platforms.. Clyburn argues that the realignment accelerated as Democrats pursued legislative and social initiatives that addressed racial discrimination—naming New Deal-era changes. the role of Harry Truman. and major civil rights-era accomplishments under Lyndon B.. Johnson, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.. The implication is direct: when parties change what they champion, voters follow the meaning, not the brand.
A personal history built from language, faith, and pressure
Clyburn also uses the excerpt to set boundaries around memory.. He notes that “The First Eight” is structured so some figures receive more attention than others. not because others were unimportant but because their careers. he argues. carried distinctive national weight.. Robert Smalls. Joseph Hayne Rainey. and Robert Brown Elliott are singled out in the introduction for the breadth of their public prominence. including roles connected to constitutional conventions and national oratory.. Yet he insists the lived experiences of the remaining men still offer lessons.
He further addresses language choices—how words can dignify, distort, or dehumanize.. In the excerpt. Clyburn says terms such as “Negro. ” “Colored. ” and “mulatto” appear sparingly. and he explains why he avoids spelling out what he calls the most vile and frequent slur directed at Black people in that era.. He also says he intentionally uses “enslaved” rather than “slave. ” a choice meant to recognize forced human reality rather than reduce people to a condition imposed on them.. And he notes a stylistic decision to capitalize “Black” and lowercase “white. ” describing it as a shift in how the terms function culturally and racially.
Beyond the historical and editorial details, the excerpt turns personal again.. Clyburn writes that his life has been grounded in faith and fortitude. shaped by his father. a fundamentalist minister. and his mother. a civic-minded beautician.. He describes involvement with the NAACP at age 12 and later resistance to laws that stripped civil rights. including founding involvement with SNCC and student protest leadership in the late 1950s and early 1960s.. The arc he lays out connects activism to governance—moving from protest and incarceration to the conviction that history must be told accurately. including within classrooms.
That connection is where the political meaning of “The First Eight” becomes clearest.. Clyburn positions the book as a response to incomplete narratives: the kind that leave gaps large enough for myths to fill.. He ties Reconstruction’s promise to the broader American democratic ideal of liberty and justice for all. and he argues that the post-emancipation gains achieved by the first Black lawmakers could not prevent later violence and fraud.. In his telling. the setbacks were not incidental—they were part of a deliberate struggle over what democracy was allowed to mean.
Why Clyburn’s Reconstruction frame still matters now
The excerpt reads as a reminder that American political development has never been a straight line.. Reconstruction expanded access to political participation, then met organized resistance that sought to roll back rights.. Even party membership didn’t stay fixed; it shifted as national platforms evolved, especially around civil and voting rights.. That’s a lesson with contemporary weight. because debates about who belongs in politics often depend on whether citizens understand the history of how rights were won—and how they were contested.
In Clyburn’s framing, the portraits on his wall are not just commemorations.. They are a practical argument about inheritance: the idea that modern leadership draws legitimacy from those who came before. and that forgetting them isn’t neutral.. He closes the introduction by returning to South Carolina’s motto—“While I breathe. I hope”—a phrase that functions like a political posture.. It suggests that even after hard chapters. there’s still a duty to keep pressing for a version of the country that matches its founding claims.
For readers looking for more than a biography, the excerpt offers a broader cultural message: history can’t be treated as background. It’s a working system that influences memory, party identity, and what people think is possible next.