U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) spoke about his new book and compared Republicans to Reconstruction-era white supremacists during a talk with Medill Prof. Natalie Moore at Evanston Township High School Tuesday evening.

At 85, Clyburn is one of the most influential Black Democrats in the country and widely considered a power broker in his party. He was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992 to represent South Carolina’s only majority-Black district.

His book, “The First Eight,” is about the state’s first eight Black representatives. They were all elected during Reconstruction, the brief period following the Civil War when Black people had political rights in the South. No other Black South Carolinians were elected to Congress until Clyburn, almost a century later.

At Tuesday’s event, Clyburn said he sees parallels between the Make America Great Again movement and the 19th-century Redeemers, who fought to reinstitute white supremacy in the South after the Civil War. 

“When I started to write this book, I was going to just write a fun book about these eight people,” Clyburn said. “In the middle of this process came the 2020 election. And I’m sitting there one night, and I saw on TV what they were doing up in Detroit, Michigan. They were trying to break into the place where they were counting the ballots.”

Clyburn compared the proposed Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which would require proof of citizenship to vote, to Jim Crow literacy tests that disenfranchised Black voters. Democrats have criticized the bill — which passed in the House last month but is likely to stall in the Senate — as voter suppression, while Republicans argue it is necessary to prevent voter fraud.

He claimed that Project 2025, a right-wing policy agenda outlined by conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation ahead of the 2024 election, was directly based on the Edgefield Plan, a plot by Redeemers to seize power in the South after the Civil War. He also likened the Red Shirts, white supremacist paramilitaries that intimidated Black voters, to modern Trump supporters who don red MAGA hats.

Lake Forest College sophomore CJ King attended the event and called Clyburn a “legend.” After the talk, audience members were able to ask Clyburn questions during a Q&A, during which King asked Clyburn how he keeps a “level head” despite injustice.

“I just came to see him, pick his brain, listen to him talk,” King said. “I think history often repeats itself, so I think learning about the past — that’ll help us move forward.”

Also in attendance were U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Evanston), who is retiring after 27 years in Congress, and Mayor Daniel Biss, whom she has endorsed as her successor.

“As we’re dealing with these unbelievable attacks on civil rights, now voting rights of Black people and people of color, to hear both the historical perspective — the understanding of what we’ve been through — and this vision of a realistic, hopeful person about what it’s gonna take to get through, it was very moving to me,” Biss told The Daily following the event.

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