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24 Arriving in Congress Nineteen-ninety three was quite a year for America. Bill Clinton was inaugurated as the forty-second president, and Democrats held the majority in both houses of Congress . Michael Jordan scored his twenty thousandth point for the Chicago Bulls. The Dallas Cowboys won the Super Bowl. Shaquille O’Neal was a rookie with the Orlando Magic. Jim Clyburn was a rookie too, starting his first year as congressman from the Sixth District of South Carolina. Unlike Shaq, however, I was fifty-two years old, an age when a lot of people are considering retirement instead of starting up a new career. One veteran reporter in Washington seemed to delight in suggesting that I would not have much time to build the kind of seniority needed to get much done in the House of Representatives. I felt like telling him that I was fifty-two, not eighty-two. Others enjoyed pointing out that it had taken federal legislation to force the State of South Carolina to create a congressional district in which a majority of the population was African American. Creating such a district, they contended, represented an extraordinary piece of special legislation. What was extraordinary, I usually responded, was the fact that in a state where 28 percent of the population was black, the congressional delegation was 100 percent white and had been that way for ninety-five years. What was extraordinary was the fact that for nearly a century, through the exercise of unconstitutional gerrymandering , South Carolina had somehow managed to ignore the principle of one-manone -vote and create six finely sculpted districts that were all at least 58 percent white. What was extraordinary was that the State of South Carolina had not—on its own— seen the obvious unfairness of all this and had chosen not to do anything about it on its own. But as I had learned on that memorable afternoon in my mother’s beauty salon when her childhood friend tried to diminish the dreams of an ambitious black youngster , I was not going to let anyone rain on this parade. I knew I had to make up for a lot of lost time if I was going to be a successful fifty-two-year-old rookie in Congress. I decided that a first step in that direction would be to run for the presidency of the freshman class. When I disclosed that ambition to Lee Bandy, a veteran Washington journalist who was the political reporter for the State newspaper in Columbia, he literally 218 Mr. Clyburn Goes to Washington laughed out loud. Lee was quick to inform me—with some delight—that there were several candidates for the presidency, at least one of whom was from California, which boasted sixteen new members. Another probable candidate was Eva Clayton, an African American female who represented the First Congressional District in eastern North Carolina. Eva had gained immediate seniority in the class by filling the unexpired term of Walter B. Jones Sr., who had died in office, and she became the first woman ever to win election to Congress from North Carolina. Forming Friendships and Alliances These were formidable obstacles. There were 110 freshmen in that class, the largest since 1949, and I was not certain how this fifty-two-year-old rookie from South Carolina would fare in such competition. Then I got a call from longtime friend John Winburn, a lobbyist who knew his way around Capitol Hill and a South Carolinian with an impressive history of Democratic Party activities. John Winburn had been a tremendous help to me in my primary and general election victories. I trusted him and respected his insight. He told me that running for president of the freshman class, regardless of the outcome, would be a good way for me to make myself known. He also thought I might be able to pull it off. John had served on the staff of Congressman Ken Holland of the Fifth District of South Carolina. When Ken chose not to run for reelection in 1982, John decided to go for it himself. In a five-man race in the Democratic primary, John finished a strong second but lost in the runoff to John Spratt, who went on to give many years of distinguished service from the Fifth District. I first got to know John Winburn during that race. He was an acquaintance of Bill DeLoach, who was helping John and asked me to get involved in the...

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