Jim Clyburn

Jim Clyburn (born July 21, 1940, Sumter, South Carolina, U.S.) is an American politician who served as a Democratic congressman from South Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives (1993– ). A veteran of the civil rights movement, he was the second African American and the first South Carolinian to serve as majority whip (2007–11; 2019–23). He also served as assistant leader of the Democrats (2011–19; 2023– ).

Growing up in South Carolina during a time of intense racial discrimination and segregation, Clyburn became a civil rights activist, as did other members of his family. He served as president of the local youth chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and participated in many demonstrations, including a 1961 march on the South Carolina State House, for which he was jailed. He graduated from South Carolina State College the same year. While in college he was also an organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He has said that a 1960 meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., changed his life, calling it in a 2026 interview a “Saul to Paul transformation.”

While living in Charleston, South Carolina, Clyburn worked as a public school history teacher, an employment counselor, and a director of two local youth programs and a farmworkers’ program before running a failed bid for the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1970. After his loss he was invited to work as an adviser to South Carolina Gov. John Carl West, and four years later he was appointed the state’s human affairs commissioner (1974–92). In 1992 he won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first African American since 1897 to serve as a U.S. representative from his state.

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Clyburn maintained a liberal voting record in Congress, especially on issues related to health care, education, and organized labor. He voted in favor of legislation to ban the “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment of persons in U.S. military custody (2005), backed a successful effort to increase the federal minimum wage (2007), and supported the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010), which introduced sweeping reforms to the U.S. health insurance system. He was also a strong advocate for preserving Gullah culture in his home state.

Over the years, Clyburn steadily rose within the party ranks. In the 2006 midterm elections, Democrats gained control of the House, and Clyburn became majority whip the following year. After the Democrats lost their House majority in the 2010 midterms, Clyburn was elected assistant leader, a newly created position that he assumed in 2011. In the 2018 midterms House Democrats regained control, and in 2019 Clyburn returned to the post of majority whip.

Clyburn played a pivotal role in the 2020 U.S. presidential election when, just days before the South Carolina primary, he endorsed Joe Biden. The former vice president had performed badly in three earlier election contests, but the Clyburn endorsement led to a decisive Biden victory in South Carolina that prompted his rivals to drop out and catapulted him to the Democratic nomination and ultimately to the presidency. After the South Carolina victory, Biden said, “My buddy Jim Clyburn—you brought me back!”

Democrats lost their majority in the 2022 midterms, and Clyburn became assistant leader in 2023. In 2026 he surprised some in the Democratic Party who had been promoting generational change by announcing that he would seek reelection during the 2026 midterm elections. (Fellow Democratic octogenarians Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California and Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland had already announced that they would not run.) If reelected, he would be 86 at the start of his 18th term in the House in 2027.

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Clyburn is the author of Uncommon Ground: The Story of Briggs v. Elliott, South Carolina’s Unsung Civil Rights Battle (2004) and The First Eight: A Personal History of the Pioneering Black Congressmen Who Shaped a Nation (2025).