2026年4月25日 / 美国东部时间上午11:44 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
利特尔·布朗出版公司
我们可能会从本文中推荐的商品获得联盟佣金。
在《最初八位：塑造国家的黑人开国国会议员个人史》（利特尔·布朗出版公司）一书中，南卡罗来纳州民主党人吉姆·克莱伯恩——该州第九位在众议院任职的黑人议员——讲述了帮助指导美国重建时期及之后发展历程的前任议员们的故事。
请阅读下文节选，不要错过4月26日罗伯特·科斯塔在《哥伦比亚广播公司周日早间节目》中对克莱伯恩议员的采访！
吉姆·克莱伯恩《最初八位》
偏好收听？Audible 目前提供30天免费试用。
引言
我一生中大部分时间都在谈论本书中的人物。作为第九位来自南卡罗来纳州的黑人国会议员，最初八位当选国会的黑人议员对我有着特殊的意义。2007年我当选众议院多数党党鞭时，曾要求将他们的肖像挂在我的会议室墙上。
国会图书馆提供了八幅精美的黑白照片，我至今仍珍藏着。它们时刻提醒着我，我是站在巨人的肩膀上。最初八位议员的反抗与坚毅、承诺与目标、信仰与坚韧的精神遗产，每天都在方方面面激励着我。
这些肖像挂上去后不久，有一群人来见我，其中一人问起这些人是谁。当我告诉他们时，许多人都表现出惊讶。他们原本以为，第一位代表南卡罗来纳州进入国会的黑人正和他们坐在同一张桌子旁。我带着半开玩笑却意在认真的语气回答：“哦不。在我成为第一位之前，已经有八位了。”
尽管我一生中大部分时间都了解这些人的事迹，但很多人以为我是第一位，这并不让我意外。毕竟，自八位中的最后一位乔治·华盛顿·默里在国会任职以来，已经过去了近一个世纪，直到1992年我才当选。但这次谈话坚定了我长久以来的愿望：讲述这八位议员的故事，以及他们如何代表内战之后新获得解放的400万黑人，他们在极端反对面前几乎毫无恶意、满怀善意地追求美国人人平等的承诺。
我始终认为，一个人所能达到的境界，不会超出其人生经历所能赋予的范围。本书核心的八位男性有一个共同经历：他们都出生于内战之前，当时这个国家因奴隶制问题严重分裂。尽管如此，他们年轻时期的成长经历各不相同，这也让每位开创性的议员对公共服务有着独特的理解。
理查德·哈维·凯恩和罗伯特·布朗·埃利奥特都是北方人，并非在蓄奴州长大。他们成年后才来到南卡罗来纳州，未曾经历过这个国家原罪般的奴隶制的非人道之处。
与此同时，罗伯特·卡洛斯·德·拉格、阿朗佐·雅各布·兰西尔和托马斯·以西结·米勒有幸在南卡罗来纳州由自由黑人父母抚养长大。作为当时所称的“混血儿”——或者像米勒那样，生父为白人、由自由黑人父母抚养长大——他们从父系那里获得了特权。
最后，约瑟夫·海恩·雷恩、罗伯特·斯莫尔斯和乔治·华盛顿·默里则有着战前南卡罗来纳州更普遍的黑人经历：他们生来就是奴隶。但每个人都通过独特的方式获得了自由：雷恩通过赎买，斯莫尔斯通过逃亡，默里则通过解放。
尽管背景和经历各不相同，但最初八位议员都在各自的行业中登上顶峰，并在美国最动荡的时期之一——重建时代——占据了国家历史中的独特位置。本书通过最初八位议员的视角讲述这段历史，按时间顺序展开，展现他们如何推动美国重塑政治和社会结构，以落实《独立宣言》中“人人生而平等”的宣言，同时招致了前南方邦联分子的报复，这些人想要“拯救”南卡罗来纳州，恢复内战前的白人至上状态。
当然，我是以南卡罗来纳州的视角来定义重建时期的。
我的故乡南卡罗来纳州部分地区的重建始于1861年末联邦军队的到来，结束于1877年联邦军队撤离该州边境。在这一时期，非裔美国人首次获得了担任政治公职的机会。在随后的几十年里，最初八位议员成为南卡罗来纳州黑人多数群体的领袖。他们中的大多数人在重建时期任职国会，其中斯莫尔斯、米勒和默里是在重建时期之后当选的——不过斯莫尔斯曾在重建时期更早当选过。但正如我将在后续章节中展示的那样，这八位全都是共和党议员的英勇努力，无法阻止那些常自称保守民主党人或南方民主党人的团体所实施的暴力与欺诈。但我认为，这两个称谓都是对我许多尊敬的保守民主党朋友，以及我深爱的引以为傲的南方家人的侮辱。因此在本书中，我将根据他们恢复战前白人至上社会秩序的使命，将他们称为“救赎民主党人”。
这段历史可能会让当代读者产生一些疑问。为什么最初八位议员都是共和党人？考虑到救赎民主党人的历史，为什么我——第九位议员——是民主党人？
在19世纪，共和党和民主党的理念与今天截然不同。共和党成立于1854年内战前夕，是亚伯拉罕·林肯领导的反奴隶制政党，主要由北方废奴主义者组成；而民主党则主要得到支持奴隶制的南方地区的支持。因此，内战后直到20世纪初，大多数黑人——包括我的父母——都认同共和党，始终忠诚于“林肯的政党”。然而，两党的意识形态开始发生变化，这一转变在民主党人富兰克林·德拉诺·罗斯福担任总统期间达到顶峰。在此期间，许多非裔美国人被罗斯福的社会纲领吸引，开始转向他所在的政党——尽管他的新政政策将大多数黑人排除在援助之外。这一转变在民主党人哈里·杜鲁门任期间加速，他是首位在全国有色人种协进会全国代表大会上发表讲话的总统，其“公平施政”政策包括武装部队一体化；随后的几届政府也延续了这一趋势，其中尤以民主党人林登·贝恩斯·约翰逊的“伟大社会”计划最为突出，该计划包括医疗保险、医疗补助、1964年《民权法案》、1965年《投票权法案》、1968年《公平住房法案》以及其他解决过去种族歧视影响的立法，而这些都遭到了共和党人的反对。如今，政党重组已十分清晰：黑人的公民和政治权利，曾是共和党创始原则之一，也是我和大多数非裔美国人忠诚的核心价值观，如今由民主党倡导。因此，如今大多数非裔美国人都认同民主党。
关于本书结构的说明：在比较任何一批政治人物时，出于各种原因，有些人会比其他人更引人注目。在我看来，罗伯特·斯莫尔斯——八位议员中唯一真正的内战英雄，也是仅有的两位出席1868年和1895年制宪会议的黑人之一——这两次会议分别赋予并撤销了该州黑人的政治和公民权利——他的人生不仅是八位议员中最具意义的，也是记忆中南卡罗来纳州所有人中最具意义的。还有约瑟夫·海恩·雷恩，作为首位当选美国众议院议员的黑人，他的口才和地位使他成为另一位极具重要性的人物。罗伯特·布朗·埃利奥特的演说甚至比雷恩更能引起共鸣，他是全国知名的受人尊敬的演说家。斯莫尔斯、雷恩和埃利奥特都在全国范围内声名鹊起，他们的地位自然让他们在本书中获得了更多关注，尽管其他五位的人生经历也能给我们所有人带来启示。
最后，关于语言的说明：在本书中，“Negro”（黑人）、“Colored”（有色人种，指黑人）和“mulatto”（混血儿）等词汇被谨慎使用。最初八位议员中的大多数都是“混血儿”，这是19世纪和20世纪初的常见称谓，如今却容易引起不适。但针对最初八位议员及其选民最恶毒、最频繁使用的 slur（侮辱性称谓）是N字头单词。由于我对这个词发自内心地反感，因此我在本书中没有完整拼写出来。我还有意减少了“slave”（奴隶）一词的使用，这个词会贬低被违背意愿奴役的人的人格。我将他们称为“the enslaved”（被奴役者），这承认了他们的人性，也点明了强加在他们身上的处境。最后，我还选择遵循新版《芝加哥手册》的指导方针，将“Black”（黑人）大写，将“white”（白人）小写。这是一个相对较新的做法，随着“Black”一词如今更多地与文化和种族相关，而非仅仅描述肤色，这一用法逐渐演变。在与一位图书馆员结婚的58年里，我成了语法的严格遵守者，欣然接受了这一新用法。
和我们所有人一样，最初八位议员也并非完美无缺。但他们迎难而上，决心以行动证明，种族并不能定义一个人的人性。他们深知，除非美国践行其“自由与正义为所有人”的建国原则，否则我们的国家无法实现其民主理想。
和我的前任们一样，我的人生也根植于信仰与坚韧。正如我在回忆录《蒙福的经历：真正的南方人，自豪的黑人》中所写的那样：“我所有的经历并非都令人愉快，但我认为它们都是祝福。”的确，我的父亲是一名原教旨主义牧师，母亲是一位热心公益的美容师，他们确保我接受了基于圣经原则的教育基础，并且他们坚持认为，尽管我出生在吉姆·克劳法的枷锁之下，我依然可以取得成功，这让我充满勇气。他们都秉承着父亲常说的哲学：以身作则，言传身教，并且践行了父亲的教诲。正是由于他们的教导和实践，我在12岁时就加入了全国有色人种协进会（NAACP）。作为一名大学生，我自然地抵制那些剥夺和我外貌相似的人公民权利的法律，成为了学生非暴力协调委员会（SNCC）的创始成员，并在20世纪50年代末和60年代初担任学生抗议领袖。在此期间我被监禁和逮捕的经历，只会坚定我对我们所追求事业的奉献精神。后来，在我第一份正式工作——查尔斯顿一所高中的历史教师——期间，我下定决心要准确地讲述我们的历史，而不是通过那些在教科书中试图贬低和排除非裔美国人成就的人的视角。
一路走来，当我展望未来时，我曾参与的运动所取得的来之不易的成功——1964年《民权法案》、1965年《投票权法案》和1968年《公平住房法案》的通过——给了我信心，让我相信有一天我可以担任公职。这一信念帮助我实现了我的政治目标：尽我所能，确保美国的伟大之处能够为所有人所触及和负担得起。
就像我的八位前任一样，我的人生旅程中也遭遇过反对和挫折。的确，南卡罗来纳州的历史并不总是美好的。其中一些经历对我和许多其他人来说，尤其是那些和我外貌相似的人来说，非常不愉快。但我们的历史就是历史，我认为应该完整地讲述它。而当我讲述为我和无数后来者铺平道路的最初八位议员的历史时，我从未忘记我们州的座右铭：“只要我尚有气息，我就抱有希望。”
节选自吉姆·克莱伯恩《最初八位》。版权所有©2025年吉姆·克莱伯恩。经哈切特图书集团旗下子公司利特尔·布朗公司许可转载。保留所有权利。
Book excerpt: “The First Eight” by Jim Clyburn
April 25, 2026 / 11:44 AM EDT / CBS News
Little, Brown & Co.
We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article.
In “The First Eight: A Personal History of the Pioneering Black Congressmen Who Shaped a Nation” (Little, Brown & Co.), South Carolina Democrat Jim Clyburn, the ninth Black man to represent his state in the House of Representatives, writes of his predecessors who helped direct the course of America during and after Reconstruction.
Read an excerpt below, and don’t miss Robert Costa’s interview with Congressman Clyburn on “CBS Sunday Morning” April 26!
*
“The First Eight” by Jim Clyburn
Prefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now.
*
Introduction
I have been talking about the subjects in this book for most of my life. The first eight Black men elected to Congress from South Carolina hold a special significance to me, the ninth. When I became House majority whip in 2007, I requested that their portraits be hung on my conference room wall.
The Library of Congress provided eight elegant black-and-white images, which I still treasure. They are a constant reminder of the shoulders I stand upon. The First Eight’s legacies of resistance and resolve, promise and purpose, faith and fortitude, continue to motivate me every day and in every way.
Soon after these portraits were hung, a group came to meet with me, and one of them asked who they were. When I told them, many of them expressed surprise. They had assumed that the first Black person to ever represent South Carolina in Congress was sitting at the table with them. I replied with my playful-with-a-purpose style, “Oh no. Before I was first, there were eight.”
Although I have known about these men for most of my life, it doesn’t surprise me that many people think I am the first; after all, prior to my election in 1992, it had been nearly one hundred years since the last of the eight, George Washington Murray, had served in Congress. But this conversation solidified my long-held aspiration to tell the stories of the Eight and how they represented the four million Blacks newly emancipated after the Civil War, and who pursued America’s promise of equality for all while displaying little malice and much charity in the face of extreme opposition.
I have always maintained that a person can be no more or no less than their life experiences allow them to be. The eight men at the center of this book shared the common experience of being born before the Civil War, when this country was bitterly divided over slavery. Despite this, the differences in their younger, formative years uniquely informed each pioneering man’s approach to public service.
Richard Harvey Cain and Robert Brown Elliott were Northerners who did not grow up in slave states. Rather, they arrived in South Carolina as adults, not having experienced the inhumaneness of the nation’s original sin.
Meanwhile, Robert Carlos De Large, Alonzo Jacob Ransier, and Thomas Ezekiel Miller had the fortune of growing up in South Carolina with free Black parents. As “mulattos,” as they were known — or, in Miller’s case, as someone born to white parents and raised by free Black parents — they enjoyed the privileges that their paternity provided.
Finally, Joseph Hayne Rainey, Robert Smalls, and George Washington Murray shared the more common Black experience in antebellum South Carolina; they were born enslaved. However, each secured their freedom through unique means — Rainey through purchase, Smalls through escape, and Murray through emancipation.
Despite their diverse backgrounds and different experiences, each of the First Eight rose to the top of his profession and occupied a unique place in our nation’s history during one of its most turbulent periods: the Reconstruction Era. This book tells the history of this era through the perspectives of the First Eight, unfolding chronologically as they contributed to America’s reinvention of its political and social structures to reflect the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that “all men are created equal,” while incurring the vengeance of former Confederates who wanted to “redeem” South Carolina to its pre-Civil War stance of white supremacy.
Naturally, I define Reconstruction through a South Carolina lens.
Reconstruction came early in parts of my home state with the arrival of the Union troops in late 1861, and ending with the departure of federal troops from its borders in 1877. In this period came African Americans’ first opportunity to serve in political office, and over the ensuing decades, the First Eight emerged as leaders among South Carolina’s Black majority. While most of them served in Congress during Reconstruction, three — Smalls, Miller, and Murray — were elected in the post-Reconstruction era, although Smalls had been elected earlier, during Reconstruction. Yet, as I will show in the pages that follow, the valiant efforts of the Eight, all Republican lawmakers, could not stop the violence and fraud deployed by the group that often referred to themselves as Conservative Democrats, or Southern Democrats. But I consider both these monikers to be insults to many of my conservative Democratic friends, whom I respect, and my proud Southern family members, whom I love. So throughout this publication I will refer to them, according to their mission of redeeming the antebellum social order of white supremacy, as “Redeemer Democrats.”
This history may raise a few questions for today’s readers. Why were the First Eight Republicans? And given the history of the Redeemers, why am I, the ninth, a Democrat?
In the nineteenth century, the Republican and Democratic parties espoused very different beliefs than they do today. Founded in 1854 in the lead-up to the Civil War, the Republicans — the anti-slavery party of Abraham Lincoln — were mostly composed of Northern abolitionists, while the Democrats found most of their support in the pro-slavery South. As a result, after the Civil War and well into the beginning of the twentieth century, most Blacks, including my parents, identified as Republicans, remaining loyal to the “party of Lincoln.” However, the ideologies of the two parties began to change, a transformation that culminated in the presidency of the Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt. During this period, many Black Americans, drawn to Roosevelt’s social platform, began to shift toward his party — although his New Deal policies excluded assistance for most Blacks. This shift accelerated under President Harry Truman, a Democrat who became the first president to address the NAACP’s National Convention and whose Fair Deal policies included integration of the armed services; and it continued under subsequent administrations, highlighted by Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society programs that included Medicare, Medicaid, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the 1968 Fair Housing Act, and other pieces of legislation addressing the effects of past racial discrimination, which the Republican party opposed. Today, the realignment is clear: Civil and political rights for Blacks, among the founding principles of the Republican Party and the fundamental values that I and most African Americans are loyal to, are now championed by Democrats, and consequently, most African Americans today identify with the Democratic Party.
A note about the structure of this book: When comparing any group of political figures, for various reasons, some emerge as more significant than others. By my estimation, Robert Smalls — the only bona fide Civil War hero of the Eight and one of only two Blacks to serve as a delegate to the 1868 and 1895 Constitutional Conventions, which granted, then revoked, Black political and civil rights in the state — lived the most consequential life, not just of the Eight, but of any South Carolinian in memory. Then there is Joseph Hayne Rainey, whose eloquence and status as the first Black man elected to the U.S. House of Representatives made him another man of great significance. Robert Brown Elliott, whose words resonated more deeply than even Rainey’s, was a revered orator throughout the country. Smalls, Rainey, and Elliott all rose to national prominence, and their stature naturally results in their receiving more attention in this book, though the lived experiences of the other five also provide lessons to us all.
Finally, a note about language: Throughout this book, words like “Negro,” “Colored” (a Black person), and “mulatto” (a person of mixed race) are sparingly used. The majority of the First Eight were “mulattos,” a common identifier in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that tends to engender uneasiness today. But perhaps the vilest and most frequently used slur directed at the First Eight and their constituents was the N-word. Because of my visceral aversion to that word, I have made an editorial judgment not to spell it out fully in this book. I have also intentionally minimized the use of the term “slave,” which dehumanizes the people who were held in bondage against their will. I refer to them as “the enslaved,” which recognizes their humanity and speaks to the condition that was forced upon them. Lastly, I have also chosen to follow the new Chicago Manual of Style guidelines and capitalize “Black” and lowercase “white.” This is a relatively new practice that has evolved, as “Black” is a term now associated more with a culture and race than simply describing skin color. During my fifty-eight years of marriage to a librarian, I became a stickler for grammar and happily adopted this new usage.
Like all of us, the First Eight were not perfect. But they rose to the challenges of their time, determined to demonstrate by example that race does not define one’s humanity. They knew that until America lived by its founding principle of “liberty and justice for all,” our country could not achieve its democratic ideals.
Like my predecessors, my life has been grounded in faith and fortitude. As I wrote in my memoir, Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black, “All my experiences have not been pleasant, but I have considered all of them to be blessings.” Indeed, my father, a fundamentalist minister, and my mother, a civic-minded beautician, ensured that I received a foundation grounded in biblical principles, and I have been emboldened by their insistence that I could be successful despite being born under the yoke of Jim Crow. Both of them were adherents to my father’s oft-stated philosophy that one should lead by precept and example, and they practiced what Dad preached. Because of their teachings and practices, I became involved with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) at the age of twelve. As a college student, I naturally resisted laws that stripped civil rights from those who looked like me, becoming a founding member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a student protest leader in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The incarcerations and arrests I accrued during this period only strengthened my dedication to the causes we pursued. Then, in my first professional job as a high school history teacher in Charleston, I found the resolve to tell our history accurately, not through the lens of those whose textbooks sought to diminish and exclude African American achievements.
Through it all, as I looked to the future, the hard-won successes of the movements I had served in — the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the 1968 Fair Housing Act — provided the faith and promise that I could one day serve in public office. This assurance helped fulfill my political purpose: to do everything in my power to ensure that the greatness of America is accessible and affordable to all.
Just like my eight predecessors, I have encountered opposition and set-backs along my journey. Indeed, South Carolina’s history has not always been positive. Some of it has been very unpleasant for me and many others, especially those who look like me. But our history is what it is, and I believe that complete history should be told. And as I tell the history of the First Eight, who have paved the way for me and countless others to come, I have never lost sight of our State’s motto: “While I breathe, I hope.”
From “The First Eight” by Jim Clyburn. Copyright © 2025 by Jim Clyburn. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group. All rights reserved.