Representatives Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) took the stage at Stanford Law School Wednesday to discuss Clyburn’s new book “The First Eight.” To an audience of over 100 students, faculty and community members, the two engaged in a wide-ranging dialogue that blended their personal stories with pointed warnings about American democracy through a historical lens.
Clyburn, a democrat, represents the 6th district of South Carolina and previously served as House Majority Whip. A member of the Civil Rights Movement prior to his election to Congress, Clyburn was imprisoned while demonstrating as a student activist. Khanna represents the 17th district of California and previously taught economics at Stanford.
“The First Eight” chronicles the lives of the first Black politicians who were elected to Congress from Clyburn’s home state of South Carolina.
According to Khanna, Clyburn is “a figure of American history.” Clyburn, he noted, was one of only a few civil rights leaders to achieve high political office in the United States. For Khanna, there’s a personal dimension to his admiration for Clyburn: “I would not be serving in the United States if it weren’t for people like Mr. Clyburn,” he said, referencing the 1965 immigration reforms that allowed his parents to come to America.
The two lawmakers’ rapport anchored the evening.
“Ro is my good friend,” Clyburn said. He admitted that in Congress the phrase is often perfunctory, but in this case affirmed his sincerity. Mutual respect and shared political goals remained a throughline in the pair’s discussion of Clyburn’s book.
Clyburn explained that the book was inspired by portraits of the first eight Black congresspeople from South Carolina that hang in his office. When visitors assumed Clyburn was the first Black representative from South Carolina since the Reconstruction, he would respond playfully: “Oh no, before me there were eight.” Eventually, he decided; “My next book is going to be about these eight people,” he said.
But the project changed course in 2020. Watching attempts to challenge election results in several states, Clyburn said he realized the story needed sharper contemporary resonance. “Rather than just introduce these eight people to the American public, I need to introduce their efforts, what happened [and] why there [have been] 95 years between number eight on this list and yours truly, number nine.”
According to Clyburn, the book’s central argument is a stark reminder: “Reconstruction came to an end by a vote of eight to seven. Jim Crow became the law of the land by a vote of 185 to 184.” “That’s what this book is all about,” he said, “and why we have to be very careful that we don’t relive that history.”
Khanna agreed. “If you didn’t know the history book, that it was that one vote, it reminds you of how historically contingent things were,” he said. Khanna drew a parallel between the Reconstruction and modern political inflection points like voter identification laws.
Among the eight, Clyburn believes Robert Smalls was “the most consequential South Carolinian who ever lived.” He recounted how Smalls, born enslaved, commandeered a Confederate ship and delivered it to Union forces.
What struck Clyburn most was what came after Smalls’ journey. “Think of this,” he told the audience. “In February, you were enslaved. In August, you’re sitting down with the President of the United States.” Smalls met with Abraham Lincoln to argue for the enlistment of Black troops. Lincoln ultimately authorized their recruitment. “But for the freedmen,” Clyburn said, quoting Lincoln, “the war would have been lost.”
Clyburn believes the 95-year gap between him and the last of the eight results from the mechanics of disenfranchisement. Southern states, he said, “changed their constitutions” and “changed their voting procedures.” He described majority runoff requirements designed to prevent a Black candidate from winning a three-way race and “full slate” laws that invalidated ballots unless voters selected an entire roster of candidates. “They racialized all the elections,” Clyburn said.
Even after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, new methods emerged, including at-large elections that diluted Black voting power. The result was not accidental but engineered, he said.
Attendee Robert Liu ’28 said Clyburn’s talk reminded him that “everything is unprecedented if you don’t know history.” Nason Li ’29, who hopes to one day run for political office, called Clyburn “a legend.” Li said that Clyburn’s story stands as an inspiration for students.
For Li, Clyburn remains “a paragon of rights.”