A lifelong love of learning and a desire to share those who came before him led Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-District 6) to write “The First Eight: A Personal History of the Pioneering Black Congressmen Who Shaped a Nation.”

The book serves as a look back on the first eight Black congressmen from South Carolina, including Joseph Hayne Rainey, Robert Carlos de Large, Robert Brown Elliott, Richard Harvey Cain, Alonzo Jacob Ransier, Robert Smalls, Thomas Ezekiel Miller and George Washington Murray.

Clyburn, a former history teacher with Charleston County Public Schools, also explores why it took nearly a century before he, the ninth Black congressman from the state, was elected.

“Ten years ago, I released my memoir that I called ‘Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black,’” Clyburn sai

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