The First Eight: A Personal History of the Pioneering Black Congressmen Who Shaped a Nation by Jim Clyburn the Ninth
Notes from The First Eight : A Personal History of the Pioneering Black Congressmen Who Shaped a Nation by Jim Clyburn, the Ninth. 2025 . This book isn’t so much a biography of the f irst e ight Black US representatives from South Carolina, but a historical record of the state of South Carolina pretty much from the Civil War through Reconstruction . Representative Clyburn intersperses experiences from his own life , as the ninth Black representative from South Carolina throughout the narrative , almost a century had passed between the first eight congressmen from 1870 through the 1890s, and the election of Representative Clyburn in 19 92. Twelve of us met on Saturday June 27 th for our discussion. Barb started us out with, “ I was really struck by Clyburn’s early introduction. What is going on now is so resonant to him. I wish I had known about the profiles of the first eight. It was easy to get confused between t...