ETHS Hosts FAN Event with Rep. James Clyburn

"The First Eight: A Personal History of the Pioneering Black Congressmen Who Shaped a Nation," a conversation between Representative James E. Clyburn and Natalie Y. Moore, will be held on Tuesday, November 4, 2025, at 6:30pm in the ETHS Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public, suitable for ages 12 and up. No registration is required.

 

South Carolina Congressman James E. Clyburn (SC-06) is renowned as a Democratic kingmaker and one of the most distinguished Black political leaders in American history. But behind him stand eight other remarkable men: the first Black politicians elected to Congress from his home state, who blazed the path for his own ascent. Since arriving in Congress in the early nineties, Congressman Clyburn has been guided by their wisdom and example — and sobered by their struggles, particularly against the enduring demon of American racism.

 

South Carolina’s first eight Black congressmen all rose to office in the wake of the Civil War and emancipation — only to see their gains extinguished as the dark veil of Jim Crow fell across the South. It would take nearly a century before the ninth Black representative from the state, Clyburn himself, was elected.

 

In The First Eight: A Personal History of the Pioneering Black Congressmen Who Shaped a Nation, Rep. Clyburn brings these men’s stories — and their message of liberty — to the nation they served. Among them: Joseph Rainey, born enslaved in 1832, who became the first Black politician elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in American history; Robert Smalls, celebrated for his extraordinary Civil War heroism, when he commandeered a Confederate vessel and delivered it — and his freedom — to the Union; and Richard Cain, editor of a widely read newspaper for Black South Carolinians and a figure deeply associated with Emanuel AME Church, one of the oldest and most distinguished Black churches in America, and where nine Black congregants were murdered in a racist mass shooting in 2015.

 

Through the trials, tribulations, triumphs, and setbacks all nine men faced, Rep. Clyburn illuminates a whole new way of understanding the arc from the Civil War to the present day. The First Eight is a singular blend of history and memoir — at once a monument to eight trailblazing Americans, a meditation on progress, and a clear-eyed reckoning with how far we have yet to go in our nation’s ongoing struggle for true democracy.

 

Rep. Clyburn will be in conversation with Natalie Y. Moore, an award-winning journalist and author and senior lecturer and director of audio programming at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.