Firing Line

A lesson from the past and a warning for the future.

This week on Firing Line.

- My cautionary tale is this.

Anything that's happened before can happen again.

- South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn is talking about segregation.

- All it takes is a rogue Supreme Court.

And I'm not too sure that we have not gotten there.

- So you think they would reinstitute Jim Crow?

- Absolutely.

And I think the Supreme Court is well on the way to doing that.

- Clyburn's recent book, "The First Eight," is a reminder of black Americans' political advancement and deliberate political suppression.

It tells the story of the eight black Americans elected to Congress from South Carolina immediately following the Civil War.

There wouldn't be a ninth until Clyburn was elected in 1992, close to a century later.

And you say that it became more urgent to you to tell this tale after January 6th.

- Right.

I am convinced that whoever put January 6th together used a roadmap that came right out of this era.

- At 85 years old, Clyburn recently announced that he will run for reelection, seeking an 18th term in office.

- I do believe I am very well equipped, and healthy enough.

>> Clyburn is a national power broker.

His famous fish fry is a mandatory stop for any Democrat with presidential ambitions.

Here is my interview with Congressman Jim Clyburn from November of last year.

>> "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by... And by the following.

>> Congressman Jim Clyburn, welcome back to "Firing Line."

>> [ Laughs ] Thank you so much for having me back.

>> You have said that the inspiration for your new book, "The First Eight," came from conversations with people who mistook you too often as the first Black congressman from South Carolina.

>> That's correct.

And on one occasion, a group of people in my conference room looked up on the wall and asked me, "Who were those eight people?"

And when I explained to them, one of them said, "I thought you were the first," and I commenced to tell them about these people.

Why do so many people make that mistake though?

- Well I think that white washing of history has always been a part of this country, especially since the Civil War.

The people who came out of the Civil War, having lost the war, decided that was just a battle, that they would continue the fight to redeem the South to its pre-Civil War days.

And in my book I refer to them as Redeemers.

The Redeemer Democrats were the Southern Democrats.

They wanted to redeem the South.

They wanted to redeem the South to pre-Civil War days.

And constitutionally, they couldn't get it done.

But you will see, in instance after instance, they made the decision, we're going to take our society back as close to slavery as we can get it without violating the Constitution.

So now the 13th Amendment was there which meant that the formerly enslaved were now free.

The 14th Amendment gave them equal protections of the laws, and of course the 15th Amendment the right to vote.

But the implementation of constitutional amendments rely on legislative action.

And that's where they made their tax.

Went straight to the legislature, and then they got the Supreme Court to interpret these things the way one of them interpreted it, and that's how we got Jim Crow.

>> The first Black South Carolina member of Congress, Joseph Hayne Rainey.

>> Yeah.

>> You say when you got to Congress in 1993, there was practically zero evidence that he had ever been in the same halls you were walking.

>> That's correct.

And I set out to change that.

>> And later, you were able to hang his portrait in the Capitol, name -- have a meeting room designated in his honor.

>> Right.

>> Why was that so important to you?

>> Well, I believe history is very important.

History should not just be informative, but it should instruct.

And because I believe that so strongly, I think that the extent to which we are left out of that history takes away from the foundation that our children and grandchildren can build upon.

I have grandchildren.

I've got a great-granddaughter.

I think it's important for her to know who she is and from when she came.

Robert Smalls was one of your first eight.

He was born enslaved.

He became a Civil War hero.

- Right.

- You call him, quote, "the most consequential South Carolinian who ever lived."

- Yes.

- Why?

- Because he was.

>> What'd he do?

>> Well, Robert Smalls was born enslaved.

His mother never told who his father was, but she knew that his father was not African-American.

And he put together a scheme to escape from slavery.

>> He met with Abraham Lincoln?

>> Yep.

He escaped in May.

In August, he was sitting down with Abraham Lincoln.

Smalls had become a celebrity all over the country, having escaped slavery the way he did, having been rewarded with his freedom and with significant amounts of money.

He was asked to go to Washington, sit down with Abraham Lincoln, and get permission for Blacks to serve.

And he left Washington having convinced Lincoln to do that, and Lincoln authorized him to go back to South Carolina and recruit 5,000 soldiers that turned into 40,000.

And Abraham Lincoln said himself, and it's in the book, "Were it not for these soldiers, they would not have won the war."

So I believe that that war changed directions because of Robert Smalls.

It's pretty clear the facts are there.

>> There's one of the first eight whose story you say, quote, "Gives me the greatest pause."

That's Robert De Large.

So how is he different?

- He was born a free Black.

He was from a family from Haiti.

His father was a tailor, mother a dressmaker.

They owned slaves.

Because he was of mixed race, he was able to get an education, and he really joined the Confederate Army.

He was a big apologist for the enslavers and he looked down upon those who were enslaved until the war was over and the Union had won the war and he flipped sides.

He used his color to get an education and he used his color to suppress those he considered beneath him until he needed them to vote for him.

He only served one term and I think that was because people soon saw through him.

The history of these men, especially the heroes, the ones you most admire, it strikes me that in an era where there was a move to tear down Confederate statues and to contextualize them and put them in museums and take them out of public spaces, that there's a real opportunity to build statues, to build up these men and to remind this next generation of our history.

Yeah, these things evolve.

You'll see various portraits of Robert Smalls in places, none really official.

I have not seen -- I have talked with the legislator that was working on putting his likeness in the Capitol.

He represents Beaufort and happened to be a Republican.

And his thing to me was, you know, Robert Smalls was a Republican.

Well, all eight of these people were Republicans.

>> Were Republicans.

>> My mother and father were Republicans.

So, but this Republican Party today... >> It's a little different.

>> It's a little bit different.

>> It's a little bit different.

You say that, you know, as a result of the tumultuous and challenging times in which we live now, this book has become much more than an introduction to heroic figures.

>> Absolutely.

>> Heroic figures who have been lost to history.

It is now a cautionary tale.

>> Right.

>> And you say that it became more urgent to you to tell this tale after January 6th.

>> Right.

>> You say that the Redeemer Democrats are echoing the tactics of MAGA Republicans.

>> Absolutely.

>> Tell me more about that.

>> Well, just look through all the stuff that they did.

A guy named Witherspoon Gary, a general in the Confederate Army.

>> Completely unrepentant, believed that Robert E. Lee should not have surrendered.

>> Absolutely.

And he did everything he could.

He, like a particular figure in the White House today, he overtook the entire mechanism.

He wrote an edict giving instructions as to how they should conduct themselves and one of the things he instructed them to do, always wear a red shirt.

The red shirts.

Today, red caps.

He instructed them, rifle clubs, Ku Klux Klan, use violence.

Proud Boys, today.

You can look at what's happening today.

If you want to know what all this is about, you can get a nice, concise understanding from this book.

>> So, are you saying these tactics echo the past?

>> Absolutely.

In fact, I am convinced that whoever put January 6th together used a roadmap that came right out of this era.

>> How far do you think the current MAGA Republican Party -- 'cause you say Proud Boys, which are different from run-of-the-mill MAGA.

>> Absolutely.

>> How far do you think MAGA Republicans -- and you even referenced Donald Trump as the leader of the MAGA Republicans.

>> Sure.

>> I mean, when you reference the echoes to history, how far do you think or are you warning that they're willing to go?

>> All the way.

>> What do you mean by that?

What do you mean by "all the way"?

Because you write at one point in the book, the MAGA Republicans and their supporters who want to make America great again want to be remaking it in the image of the Antebellum Era.

I just want to be clear.

Are you saying you think they want to reinstate slavery?

>> No.

They wish to get us back as close to slavery as they can possibly get us to without violating -- because the Constitutional -- they can't do it.

Jim Crow?

Yes.

- So you think they would reinstitute Jim Crow?

- Absolutely.

And I think the Supreme Court is well on the way to doing that.

Remember, all of this started with a Supreme Court decision called Dred Scott.

That's what defined and laid the foundation for all of this stuff.

And then we got another case called Pleasant versus Ferguson that's established separate and equal.

- Well, and of course the Supreme Court during Reconstruction overturned the first Civil Rights Act.

- Yes.

- So I-- - The Supreme Court did.

The 1866 Civil Rights Act was overturned by the United States Supreme Court.

And what has just happened with the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the first, they're doing it a little more sophisticated, but they're doing that.

This Supreme Court is overturning the Voting Rights Act.

They are now saying it is legal to use political results to redistrict and that is eliminating more and more African-Americans from from the political process.

To be really clear, your view is the MAGA Republicans are explicitly racist and want to turn the country back towards a time that approaches Jim Crow, if not achieving it.

- I don't know that I would call all MAGA Republicans that.

I'm very circumspect about using the term.

They are racist.

I don't put that label on any one person, but I know what the word means.

It's sitting there in the dictionary for anybody to understand it.

They are white supremacists and there are people who are supporters of this president who admit to me that they are white supremacists.

I've had people who support this president tell me that they thought that slavery was a good thing.

And really, for us to deny that this exists, I don't know why we would do that.

- You've had people tell you, who support this president, that they thought slavery was a good thing.

- Absolutely, right to my teeth.

- Constituents of the US?

- Absolutely, in my congressional district.

- What's that like?

- (laughs) Sometimes I keep things to myself.

- In the period that you cover in your book, nearly all Black Americans were proud Republicans, as you mentioned.

Your mother and father were Republicans.

All of the first eight were Republicans.

- Right.

- The Redeemer Democrats did not want Black Americans - Right.

- in their party.

This was the party of Lincoln, it was the Party of Emancipation in 1992.

You participated in a debate on the original Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr., and the question of the debate was, "Should Black Americans come back to the Republican Party?"

In explaining why they should not, you invoked the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Here's what you said then.

Take a look.

>> And so it seems to me that it's a Democratic party that has come forward with those group remedies, such as the Voting Rights Act.

>> The Voting Rights Act is not individually applied.

It's applied to the group, because it was the group that was denied the right to vote.

>> Do you remember that debate?

>> Yes, I do.

>> The constitutionality of whether race can be desidered when drawing congressional lines is coming before the Supreme Court this term.

You write that you would not have been elected if it hadn't been for the Voting Rights Act.

>> Absolutely.

>> What is at stake 60 years later if it is not upheld?

>> It will retrogress.

I mean, that's what happened.

In the 1870s, South Carolina was allocated five congresspeople.

Four of them were Black.

And so -- And in 1902, zero Black.

So, look, a majority of the House in South Carolina during this period of time were Black.

These were Black people.

>> Earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order entitled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History."

He declared that there was, quote, "a widespread effort to rewrite our nation's history, replacing objective facts with distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth."

You're a former history teacher.

>> Yep.

>> What do you make of this?

>> Hogwash.

Hogwash.

The facts are the facts.

For some strange reason, this administration and a lot of people in this country have decided that we can have alternate facts.

>> President Trump feels that that history intends to cause shame.

What do you say to that claim?

>> That history does cause shame, but it's not the way he thinks.

Slavery is shameful.

Jim Crow is shameful.

Lynching is shameful.

All of that was made legal in this country.

That's shameful.

So he's correct.

That history is shameful.

But what he's attempting to emulate or to eliminate, the side of that history of the victims rather than the perpetrators.

>> You've been in Congress for more than 30 years.

There's a move amongst a new generation of Democrats to see a fresh batch of Democrats, younger Democrats, coming into play.

You have announced that you will be making an announcement about your future in Congress in the coming months.

>> Right.

>> What is your perspective now from where you sit about a new generation of Democrats?

>> Oh, I believe there is very strongly.

And people tend to forget when I became a member of Congress, I hired a staff.

My chief of staff was 29 years old, the youngest on Capitol Hill.

So I asked the question a lot.

Yep he's still with me.

He's been with me for the entire 32 years.

So I'm supposed to fire him.

"You're now too old.

I gotta get another 29 year old."

Is that what I'm supposed to do?

I mean, come on?

I got elected the Congress at 52.

I wished the attention of the public was placed on why is it that Jim Clyburn gets elected to Congress at a time when white politicians would be retiring?

Why was it I did not get to Congress until I was 52?

Why was it there 95 years between number eight and number nine?

Nobody focused on that.

Everybody focused on, "Oh, you're too old to be here."

Well, I kind of think I was too old to be a freshman congressman.

When you say that this is a cautionary tale, this book is as much a history as it is a cautionary tale.

What is your precautionary warning for this next generation?

My cautionary tale is this.

It's really a term.

Anything that's happened before can happen again.

That's the whole deal.

Just remember, all it takes is a rogue Supreme Court.

And I'm not too sure that we have not gotten there.

As you reflect on your own life and your work and your legacy, what message do you have for those who follow you who are the next eight?

I make this a standard.

Politics is not complicated.

It is very, very simple.

It's called building relationships.

When you offer for office, build a relationship with the constituents you're seeking to serve.

Get to know who they are.

Get to know their families.

Get to know their communities.

Deal with their dreams and their aspirations.

Not yours, but theirs.

They're the ones that hold your future.

Not you.

They hold it.

>> Are you optimistic about the chances for Democrats in the next cycle?

>> After the most recent election, yes.

Before the most recent election... >> You weren't so sure?

>> Was not sure at all.

>> Because of the leadership?

>> No, because of the results of election after election.

They kind of lethargic.

>> I mean... >> View the action that people took on the elections.

>> And Donald Trump had increased his share of Black male voters by double, by 50%.

Simply because people are easily brainwashed.

You think that Black male voters doubled their support for Trump because they were brainwashed?

They believe that's foolishness.

When I first started in politics, I used to say that there's no substitute for substance.

I used to say that a lot.

Do you still believe that?

- No.

- Why?

Because style trumps substance, and that is an intended pun.

So what does that mean for the future?

It means we got to get beyond the style.

We got to get back to substance.

We got to say I don't care how pretty the language, I don't care how forceful the language, What is the substance?

When you have insulin, costing $600 and $700 a month per person, and you get that insulin reduced to $35 a month, what's the most important to that person?

The substance of that decision or the style within which you make it.

And you've got a person with a lot of style now that's removing that cap and will let insulin go back up to $600 a month.

That's why I say we have reached a point in this country that style seems to trump substance.

How do we get back, and what gives you hope?

We have to start electing people to office who believe in the Constitution, who believe in representative democracy.

And I say that because that's what a republic is.

It represents a democracy.

And when Benjamin Franklin first intoned that we've given you a republic, if you can keep it, he himself expressed a doubt as to whether or not this country would be able to keep this republic.

- Do you think we can?

I think we can, but the question is, will we?

Will we?

I have no idea.

That remains to be seen.

I'd love to end on how you were going to reflect on your legacy.

- Well, each individual has got to take solace of the fact that they have something to say about this.

Hayes, who started Jim Crow, won the presidency by a vote of 185 to 184.

Reconstruction came to an end by one vote.

Jim Crow became the law of the land by one vote.

So I ask everybody, which will be your one vote?

Representative Jim Clyburn, thank you for returning to Firing Line.

Thank you.

Firing Line with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by... And by the following.

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