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Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, and Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., wave from the floor of the House of Representatives during the roll call vote to elect a new Speaker of the House in the U.S. Capitol in Washington Thursday, Jan. 4, 2007. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

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Close to his roots

Congressman Clyburn takes oath as House majority whip

By GENE CRIDER
T&D City Editor
Friday, January 05, 2007

As a child, James E. Clyburn traveled to Orangeburg regularly with is father, a minister at a local church. In 1961, Clyburn graduated from South Carolina State University to begin a career that would take him to the highest levels of power.

Through it all, the 6th District Congressman has not forgotten his alma mater, where he met his wife. Nor has the Sumter native forgotten Orangeburg County, where he is a regular. The congressman is likely to show up for everything from a sidewalk groundbreaking to the naming of a building in his honor.

He said he isn't going to forget it now, even though he has risen to the third-highest position in the U.S. House of Representatives.

"You'll probably see much more of me than you do now," Clyburn said.

For instance, he says he's sworn to secrecy, but he's preparing for an "earth-shattering" announcement for the area that will be made "very soon."

On Thursday, Clyburn was sworn in as House majority whip. He is the first South Carolinian and second black person to reach that level. In that position, he is responsible for keeping track of how his fellow Democrats are voting and influencing them to hold the party line.

Clyburn says that, by his taking the position, all legislation before the U.S. House will be vetted by South Carolina values -- values Clyburn developed as a child in Sumter, and in Orangeburg.

"We are but the sum total of our experiences. I will bring to the job the experiences I developed," he said.

Those experiences included visiting the Garden City regularly as child with his father, a minister who traveled to the Church of God on Treadwell Street to preach. At the church, he developed friendships that lasted a lifetime and a respect for South Carolina State that led him to go there.

"I just have great memories of coming to Orangeburg as a kid," he said.

He didn't hit the books hard at first at S.C. State, but "I was a serious student for a couple of those years." And during college, he took part in the sit-ins against segregation and "I was arrested plenty of times."

Clyburn says he was officially arrested twice. On one occasion, "there were so many students, they overwhelmed the jail," Clyburn said. He was one of seven separated from the crowd at the Pink Palace -- Orangeburg's former jail -- to be held separately, an occasion "I sometimes get chills about."

"That is when I first met (now-U.S. District Judge) Matthew Perry, who came to represent us," Clyburn said. And the Rev. I. DeQuincey Newman of the NAACP, who knew Clyburn's background and parents, picked Clyburn as a witness in the appeal.

"I often tell that story of how I became a witness to show we never get where we're going alone," Clyburn said. He wasn't picked because of his intelligence or looks, he said, but "because of who my mother and father were. ... It tells me how I'm indebted to my mother and father."

That experience also led Clyburn to meet Emily, his wife, when she walked up to him as they were at the jail.

Clyburn continues to have strong ties to Orangeburg County. Although he resides in Columbia, he has a home in Santee, which is between his hometown of Sumter and his wife's hometown of Moncks Corner.

"We spend weekends there a lot," he said.

His memories of Santee also go back decades.

"It was in the Christmas of 1971 that I played a round of golf on the Santee Resort Golf Course, that was a long time before they integrated that golf course," he said. He believes he may have been the first black person to play there, when then-Gov. John C. West invited him to join him for a round of golf.

"When I went in that day to play, the guy looked at me and looked at John West," and never said a thing, Clyburn said. "John West knew exactly what he was doing."

Clyburn says he will be able to bring all his experiences to his new position, including those he learned in the church on Treadwell Street.

"I grew up believing, 'Inasmuch much as you've done for the least of these, you've done for me,'" he said. Also, "that faith without works is dead."

Clyburn says he believes government should help those most in need, which is why he says he has problems with President Bush's tax breaks for the richest. He would prefer tax breaks go to people who can use them for food and clothing.

Those values will be apparent in his agenda, Clyburn says. For instance, Democrats plan to take up increasing the minimum wage and reducing student loan interest rates, which Clyburn says will make an education at South Carolina State University, Claflin University, Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College and other institutions more affordable.

He says he supports making the United States energy independent, and "We'll be finding alternative sources of crops for those farmers."

"We plan on doing things that will have a positive impact on the people of South Carolina," Clyburn said.

City Editor Gene Crider can be reached at gcrider@timesanddemocrat.com and 803-533-5570. To comment on this and other stories, visit TheTandD.com.

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