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 first eight 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 1992.  

Twelve of us met on Saturday June 27th 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 their stories.”  

Robin gave us, “I didn’t find it an easy book to read. I couldn’t tell what made me so angry: the post-reconstruction or what’s going on now. I learned a ton and it’s really infuriating to see how history is repeating itself.” 

Maria said, “I found it a slog. I didn’t like history as a kid because it was all a matter of remembering dates, and this is entirely too much like that.” 

Millie commented, “Well, this is my first time here, and it was hard for me to get through the book. I finished it 15 minutes ago. I learned so much. Two days ago, I looked at Howard Zinn’s book to see if any of these eight guys were in it. Not one was in it. This verifies what Representative Clyburn was saying; they (the first eight) were erased. Howard Zinn would have loved writing about these men, but they didn’t catch his eye because they weren’t taught about in History.” 

Shelara, who is extremely well read, said “t was a relatively easy read. It was a rehashing of things I already knew.” 

Kay: There is so much detail in this book that I had to be selective. I’m glad that Representative Clyburn wrote the book, and you can tell the pride that he has in his home state of South Carolina. I’m thinking about the recent Supreme Court decision that will affect voting now. I enjoyed the story about Robert Smalls especially. Then Clyburn mentioned the movie, Glory. I plan to check out the DVD and have another look at it this weekend. Clyburn also mentioned that Memorial Day was started by emancipated Blacks in Charleston. My father was born in South Carolina, and I have a first cousin who lives there now. When I visited nine years ago, this cousin took me to a reenactment of one of the battles of the Civil War. It took place on a plantation, and I had a chance to see the slave quarters and the master’s house. People who weren’t even part of the reenactment joined in by wearing the clothes of that period. Another connection to me was Bermuda. Joseph Hayne Rainey, the first Black person to serve in the US House of Representatives, set up a barber shop in Bermuda after he escaped there after being conscripted to work for the Confederacy during the Civil War. 

 P. 79 “Bermudans regarded him so highly that the street where his St. George shop was located was later named Barber’s Alley in his honor...Rainey’s success in business also contributed to his success in politics. After the Civil War ended, he moved back to Georgetown, SC, and his wealth and experiences made him a prominent player in Republican politics, ultimately leading to his historic election to Congress.” 

Kay continued, “There was just so much I learned from reading this book, there was the epitaph Representative Clyburn wants on his tombstone: “He did his best to make the greatness of America accessible and affordable for all.” 

Nancy: I’ve taken a bunch of history classes in the last couple of years, so I really enjoyed this book. When I was growing up the only thing I ever heard about Reconstruction was the word “carpetbaggers.” What I’ve learned about reconstruction in the past couple of years is that it was just this little window of time. I think one of the things that really struck me is that in the history of our country and the laws that governed our country at times had been horrible. And then there were all these times that we managed to get the laws improved, and people just don’t obey them, and nothing happens. This has been one of the most upsetting things: people who have been empowered to run this country flagrantly refuse to enforce the law. But I was very struck by something he said on page 234, it’s in the Epilogue: “ 

“Over the past several years I have often been asked, ‘Have you ever seen divisiveness like this before?’ My answer is always the same: ‘No, none of us have. But it’s not because the country has never been divided like this before. It’s because none of us was around during the 1860s and 1870s.’” 

So, when I think about that, you can look at it from a really hopeless and despairing kind of way, or you can look at it with this little shred or glimmer of some kind of hope, that somehow, we’re still here and not everybody is brutalized daily in some kind of way. I just really wrestle with that. I’m confused by the use of the words ‘redemption’ and ‘Redeemer Democrats.’ 

Marian answered, "t refers to people wanting to “redeem” the antebellum period; they want to redeem that time. To redeem means to ‘buy back.’ They want to redeem the time and the lifestyle that they lost.” 

Shelara said, “They’re redeeming the glory of the South. I don’t think he should have used it in this book. They used it for themselves, but I think he could have used another term.” 

Nancy, still confused, countered, “I thought redeeming implied making something better.” 

Shelara answered, “They think they’re making it better by going back. According to their mythology of the South, they made this glorious society of Lords and Ladies, of course this had no basis in reality, but that’s what they were fighting for and they lost. So, for them, because they weren’t dealt with (because this country refused to punish them) their idea is ‘we are still fighting.’” 

Nancy continued, "The other thing that i found really interesting in this book that I didn’t know was about HBCUs. I never really understood the origins of those schools, and I assumed that they were all private, and I didn’t know anything about the Morrill Act: the first one and the second one, and I didn’t know anything about land grants. I didn't know that any HBCUs were land grants. In some ways, the public HBCUs were part of “separate but equal.” On the one hand, that’s great and on the other hand it’s totally racist.  

p.213 “In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln had signed into law the first of two (p.214) land grant for education laws authored by Representative Justin Morrill of Vermont. The first Morrill Act authorized the sale of federal land to fund the creation of colleges to ‘benefit the agricultural and mechanical arts.’ When Thomas G. Glemson, the son-in-law of the ardent defender of slavery John C. Calhoun, died in 1888, he left eighty thousand dollars for the state to start a whites-only agricultural college on his estate in Oconee County. Tillman, then the governor of South Carolina, took this opportunity to designate Clemson College, now Clemson University, as a federal land grant college under the first Morrill Act. The school’s white-only charter incensed Morrill, who had become a senator, to author a second law...this led to what are now called the 1890 land grant colleges, nineteen HBCUs in the South were created to comply with the ‘separate but equal’ requirement.” 

 

Shelara shared that, “New Haven would have been the site of the first HBCU. But there was always talk because there were issues about Black people attending integrated schools. The lady in Canterbury CT, Prudence Crandall, opened her integrated school for girls and women in 1832, and they burned it down.” 

Nancy also added, “I found it helpful in the way he draws a distinction between equality and equity. I think that’s a really important distinction. I think when people don’t understand the distinction between equality and equity, that’s where we get the foundation of this country being so racist. The fact that the groundwater is not the same, this is where it gets so lost.” 

p.233 “the Eight never sought special treatment; and while they used the phrase often, they never sought equal treatment. Though they spent their lives fighting to enshrine the rights of African Americans, they also recognized, time and time again, that they stood in contrast to those who were previously their enslavers. They did not enjoy the benefit of generational wealth or education from the finest schools, if at all. And what little wealth (p.234) and limited freedoms they had were subjected to whimsical actions and arbitrary rules.” 

Their arguments were always about equity, being treated according to their needs.”  

Bonnie gave us, "Everything people have said about ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’ always jumps out at me. On page 94, Congressman Clyburn said, ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same.’ Being somewhat of a news junkie, I would relate to a lot of the things we read to what’s going on today.” 

p.146 “On April 3, 1977, President Hayes gave the order to withdraw federal troops from the statehouse in Columbia – a decision that would seal the political fate of Blacks in South Carolina for a century.” 

In 2013 Chief Justice Roberts struck the federal oversight from the Voting Rights Act, and I remember churches having buses come, and they were called ‘Souls to the Polls,’ and they would take the people to voting sites. The minute Justice Roberts took away the federal oversights, no more ‘Souls to the Polls.’  

On p. 234, Congressman Clyburn wrote, “There are frightening similarities between the Reconstruction and Post-Reconstruction eras and the events we are experiencing today.”  

With the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which they are now eviscerating, Black voter turnout increased to 60 percent, up from 6 percent. One thing that drove me crazy was that during Reconstruction, the Republicans were the good guys.  

In Beaufort County, SC, there was a hurricane in 1893. Many people were left homeless. Black communities were more severely impacted. Governor Tillman refused to send aid. It reminds me of New Orleans’ Hurricane Katrina in 2005. 

Blacks were accused of government corruption, but they were only in power for eight years. Clyburn wrote, ‘In short, we had reconstructed the state and placed it on the road to prosperity.’  This reminds me of today in Springfield OH with the Haitians. They completely resurrected that city, and now the president wants to throw them out.  

Barbara M. said ,"I like the way he writes. One of the things that stuck out to me was that people who became these notables were sometimes people of good faith and good character and at other times, they were just opportunists. I focused on the caste system that had been set up and that we still carry today, and I see a difference between history repeating itself and what we have now is that, because of our improved communication and technology, we’re more headed toward destroying ourselves than repeating history.” 

Millie offered, “I really appreciate this book; I learned so much. And although it’s not a piece of cake at all, it still gave me glimmers of hope, and I saw it as a call to hope for each of us to be active. I’m an ex Catholic nun. I was a nun for eight years. Because of my bad experience with the Catholic church, I had turned against almost all religion. This book helped me understand the importance of faith. He gave me more respect for faith. He helped me realize the anchoring power of faith when you don’t have anything else.”