Representative discusses personal history at Smalls Lecture
On their first date, Rep. James Clyburn, a Democrat, and his wife, Emily, shared a hamburger. It’s a simple enough story until you learn where they were.
“Emily and I did meet on my first visit to jail,” the congressman said to a packed Capstone Campus Room Thursday night as he delivered the 16th annual Robert Smalls Lecture through the African American studies department. “I had been there since very early morning, and it was after sunset and I was still there. I hadn’t eaten all afternoon … and I had mentioned how hungry I was to the warden. Then, I saw her come towards me with a hamburger.
“I reached for it, and she pulled it back. She split it in half and gave me one half of it … I liked it so much that we were married 18 months later.”
Clyburn and his eventual wife were in jail that day demonstrating as a part of the civil rights movement. He participated in sit-in protests across the South and took part in the historic 1963 March on Washington.
This year, he was asked to speak at the unveiling of the statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks in Washington, D.C. Across the street that day, within the same hour, Clyburn said, the Supreme Court was hearing arguments on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. He wanted to sit in on the court proceedings, but he was committed to speak at the ceremony, so he put the case in the context of the struggles of Parks and other civil rights leaders, he said.
Clyburn, along with the director of the South Carolina Postal Service, revealed new stamps commemorating Parks and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation at the event. Awards were also given to two African American studies students.