The First Eight: A Personal History of the Pioneering Black Congressmen Who Shaped a Nation
Jim Clyburn
Little, Brown and Company
Today, South Carolina congressman James E. Clyburn is renowned as a Democratic kingmaker and our nation’s most august Black political leader. But behind him stand eight other remarkable men: the first Black politicians to go to Congress from his home state, and who blazed a path for his own ascent.
In The First Eight, Congressman Clyburn shares these men’s stories, and their message of liberty, with the nation they served. Through the trials, tribulations, triumphs, and challenges that all nine men faced, Congressman Clyburn reveals a whole new way of understanding the period between the Civil War and the present.