Clyburn is pressing many of the same issues he has for decades — particularly focusing on Black voting rights ahead of the election. Clyburn is also a close confidant of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and has been a prominent congressional critic of President Donald Trump.
“Sixty years ago, 19-year-old Jim Clyburn was seeking a better future for himself and those around him,” said Bobby Donaldson, a professor of history at the University of South Carolina who heads the Center for Civil Rights History and Research. “So it’s ironic now, 60 years later, two generations later, he is now one of the architects of the very nation that he sought to be aspiring toward.”
The son of a reverend and a beauty shop operator, Clyburn early on wanted to pursue a career in public service, only to be warned off by teachers as not the place for a Black boy from the South, he recounts in his autobiography, “Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black.”
As a South Carolina State…
