The following story by Times and Democrat Regional Editor Carol B. Barker was originally published on Jan. 25, 1999, following his election as chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

A graduate of South Carolina State University, 6th District Congressman Jim Clyburn worked as a teacher and an employment counselor and directed two youth and community development projects in Charleston.

In January 1971, after unsuccessfully running for a South Carolina House seat from Charleston, Clyburn was appointed to the staff of Gov. John C. West and, in October 1974, West appointed him South Carolina Human Affairs Commissioner, a position he held for almost 18 years.

What helped propel him all the way from South Carolina’s Capital City to the nation’s Capitol Hill, explained Clyburn, was a strict upbringing by loving parents, the late Rev. and Mrs. E.L. Clyburn, and the early friendships he cemented accompanying his father when the Rev. Clyburn preached at the Church of God on Treadwell Street in Orangeburg and at another church in Summerville.

He said he has fond memories of black middle-class families, many of them educators and people that cherished education, who attended his father’s church on Treadwell Street: Mattie Pegues, who headed up the home economics department at South Carolina State College; SCSC agriculture department head Dr. Gabe Buckman; the W.C. Dash family; the Rev. John D. Rhodes and his sons, Butch, Bobby and John D. and daughters, Victoria and Rose Laverne; John and Beulah Salley and many others.

Clyburn remembers those Orangeburg families he knew as a boy as “very religious, entrepreneurial people who were very steeped in educational pursuits.”

“They were what you are supposed to be about in life,” he said.

n Lessons learned

Clyburn said he learned from his father to be tolerant of others who were different.

“I don’t understand people who can’t get beyond individual differences. My Daddy taught me that if you disagree with somebody’s ideas and you don’t have alternative solutions to offer, then you don’t have the right to disagree,” he said.

Growing up, he and his family spent hours in church each week, Clyburn said.

“I went to Sunday School at 10 a.m., Sunday morning worship at 11:30 a.m., back to youth fellowship at 5 p.m. on Sunday and to prayer meeting Sunday at 7:30 p.m. Then we were in prayer meetings at 7:30 p.m. every Wednesday and Friday, and we attended church camps,” he said.

“But all that religion was balanced with education. My Daddy used to tell me all the time: ’Son, what you pray for is good health and strength, and you can go out and use that to work hard and get an education to make a difference in your life.’ That’s the way we were taught.”

After graduating from Mather Academy in Camden, Clyburn said his first and only choice for college was South Carolina State.

“My mother tried to get me to go to a college in the east or up north, but there was never any doubt in mind. I was always going to South Carolina State. I never applied anywhere else,” he said. “A significant part of my growing up was right there on that campus.”

Recalling his days as a student at SCSC, Clyburn admitted that instructors like Marguerite Howie, who taught sociology, and Ernestine Walker, who taught history, “gave me a dozen kicks in the behind for various things. They saw something in me and molded me.”

“I only remember one thing from Mrs. Howie’s sociology course – the quote, ’Man is but the sum total of his experiences.’ I’ve always remembered that. To me that means you are what you are. You can’t be anymore than what your experiences allow you to be,” he said. “I internalized that. I don’t try to be like anybody else. I just want to be me and do things the way I feel comfortable doing them.”

n Meeting his wife

His first memory of Emily England of Moncks Corner was in 1960 when she walked up to him in the Orangeburg jail after he and hundreds of other South Carolina State students were arrested following a civil rights sit-in.

“I had not had anything to eat since being arrested, and I was famished. She had a hamburger, and she broke it in half and gave me half. I tell people I came cheap. Emily got me for half a hamburger,” said Clyburn, whose frequent references to his wife during the interview seemed to underscore the major role she plays in every aspect of his life.

While Emily stays in the background, Clyburn said she supports him and gives him her take on various situations and issues. She also faithfully peruses the obituary pages of newspapers, clipping those of constituents and their family members to which she knows he will want to respond with condolence cards, Clyburn said.

An education was of paramount importance in Clyburn’s family.

“My mother left home with her father’s permission when she was 14 years old to live in Camden with the Dibble family. She kept house for them. In return for washing dishes and cleaning up, the Dibbles sent her to Mather Academy, which was right across the street from their home,” he said. “My mother waited until we were grown to go to college. She always wanted a college degree. I was 13 when she graduated from Morris College. She never did anything but put that college degree up on the wall of her beauty shop in Sumter.”

When his mother died in 1971, there were 13 to 14 beauticians working there, Clyburn said.

“My mother was a tremendous entrepreneur,” he said.

n A father’s lesson

A poignant story Clyburn related about his father described the depth of his hunger for education.

“Daddy repeated the seventh grade three years, not because he was dumb. He repeated the seventh grade three years because when he was growing up in Kershaw County, there was no school available for blacks beyond the seventh grade,” he said. “After Daddy’s third year in the seventh grade, they wouldn’t let him come anymore, because he was so far advanced over the other students. He continued to read on his own. Daddy was a voracious reader.”

Clyburn said he can remember when his father entered Morris College, where he had always assumed his dad had earned a degree. It came as a shock when Clyburn discovered that wasn’t the case one day in 1978 during his unsuccessful campaign for secretary of state.

“A Baptist minister down in Hampton County, a Rev. Dixon, called to tell me he was supporting me in the race and asked me to come down to talk with him. During the conversation, he said, ’You know, you’ve got an interesting last name. I had only heard that name once before. There was a guy in my class at Divinity School at Morris College whose name was Clyburn. We all called him E.L. I never knew his real name. Did you know him?’

“I told him that was my Daddy. Rev. Dixon said, ’You know the interesting thing about him? He was one of the smartest guys in the class, but he never showed up for his senior year. He just dropped out of school. Nobody knew what had happened to him.’ So when I left Hampton that evening, I drove straight to Sumter. This was six months before Daddy died. I woke him up in the middle of the night and told him there was something he needed to explain to me. I told him what I had heard.”

As he described his father’s reaction, Clyburn began crying. It took him a few seconds to regain his composure.

“Daddy sat there. He almost cried. He told me about having to repeat the seventh grade for three years and why. My father had not been able to finish high school. It wasn’t because he didn’t have the ability. He didn’t finish high school because state law would not allow him to finish high school,” Clyburn said. “He wanted a college degree, but Morris College told him they had no record of his high school graduation and until such time as he could produce a high school diploma, they would not let him go into his senior year.”

Because of what happened to his father, the congressman said he gets angry when people say affirmative action is a bad idea.

“My father was limited by state action, and that’s what affirmative action is ... programs and policies and procedures designed to overcome the current effects of past discrimination. It’s not taking anything away from anybody else,” Clyburn said. “I get very, very upset when Clarence Thomas says affirmative action stereotypes a person. I’ll tell you what stereotypes a person – when you are denied a college degree, you are stereotyped for the rest of your life.”

He inherited his parents’ passion for education and their drive, Clyburn said.

“A reporter once told me that I seemed so driven and had such an intensity. I am driven ... driven to disprove every negative that exists about black people ... all these myths,” he said. “When I was Human Affairs Commissioner, I was there to prove that a black person could manage a state agency and do so in an efficient and effective manner and do so in an even-handed way. My motto while I was there was ’firm but fair.’

“When I was elected to Congress, I went there to prove that a black person could represent South Carolina in the United States Congress as good, if not better, than any white person, and I’m driven to do that. I try to prove every day that I am as good a legislator as the guy sitting next to me ...”

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