James Enos Clyburn is a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina. He has served as House Majority Whip since 2019, having previously served in the post from 2007 to 2011. Clyburn played a pivotal role in the 2020 presidential election by endorsing Joe Biden three days before the South Carolina Democratic primary. He is the son of Enos Lloyd Clyburn, a fundamentalist minister, and his wife, Almeta, a beautician.
About Jim Clyburn in brief
James Enos Clyburn is a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina. He has served as House Majority Whip since 2019, having previously served in the post from 2007 to 2011. Clyburn played a pivotal role in the 2020 presidential election by endorsing Joe Biden three days before the South Carolina Democratic primary. His congressional district includes most of the majority-black precincts in and around Columbia and Charleston, as well as nearly all of a mostly rural region within South Carolina, and he is the current dean of the state’s congressional delegation. He is the son of Enos Lloyd Clyburn, a fundamentalist minister, and his wife, Almeta, a beautician. He was initiated into the Omega Psi Phi fraternity and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history. He became involved in politics during the 1969 Charleston hospital strike. In the aftermath of the Orangeburg massacre of 1968, when three protesting students at South Carolina State were killed by police, Clyburn was appointed as the state’s human affairs commissioner. He served in this position until 1992, when he stepped down to run for Congress. After the 1990 census, South Carolina’s district lines were redrawn prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required the 6th district to be redrawn as a red-majority-majority district. He secured 55% of the vote in the primary for the Democratic nomination for the seat, eliminating the need for an expected 55% run-off vote. Five, all of whom were African American, chose to retire, but Clyburn chose to run.
He won the seat with a majority of 55%. Clyburn has been the third-ranking Democrat in the House behind Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer since 2007, serving as Majority Whip behind House Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer during periods of Democratic House control. In January 2019, he was re-elected Majority Whip in January 2019 on the opening of the 116th Congress, marking the second time the trio has served in these roles together. He and other black politicians had strongly opposed the 1895 state constitution, which essentially disenfranchised most African-American citizens, a situation that the state maintained for more than half a century until passage of federal civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s. He came up with the campaign’s slogan: “Devine for Ward Nine” when he was first elected to the Charleston city council in 1969. After an unsuccessful run for the S.C. General Assembly, he moved to Columbia to join the staff of Governor John C. West in 1971. After West appointed Clyburn as his advisor, he became the first minority advisor to a governor in the history of South Carolina and served in that position until his retirement in 1992. He also served as the first African American to hold a seat on the city council since Reconstruction. In 2011, he served as Assistant Minority Leader behind Minority Leader Pelosi and Minority Whip Hoyer, and as Assistant Majority Leader during the period of Republican House control between 2007 and 2011.
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