If you’ve been watching the Jan. 6 Select Committee hearings, you’ve become acquainted with Rep. Bennie Thompson, the levelheaded Mississippi Democrat who chairs the panel. But do you know how Thompson got the gig?
A few months ago, when numerous congressional Democrats were clamoring to chair the high-profile select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, it was Jim Clyburn who urged Speaker Nancy Pelosi to name his best friend, Congressman Bennie Thompson—native of Bolton, Miss., graduate of historically Black Tougaloo College—its chairman. In the whispering campaign that ensued, Clyburn sensed a familiar dynamic. “A lot of people wanted to be chairman,” Clyburn tells me. “And quite frankly, nobody will admit to this, but it’s the same thing I had when I ran for whip. A Black guy from Mississippi, ain’t from an Ivy League School—they won’t say it, but they think it: ‘He can’t chair this.’” Pelosi ignored the whispers, and Thompson has been widely praised for his coolheaded handling of the committee’s hearings, proving what Clyburn knew all along: “Bennie is perfect for this,” Clyburn says. “He’s unflappable, and he ain’t searching for the limelight. He’s just doing his thing.”
Thompson joins a long list of prominent officeholders who have Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black man in Congress, to thank for their positions: President Joe Biden. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison. HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge. And freshman Rep. Shontel Brown, who told me this:
“It’s no coincidence that his initials are J.C.—you can reference the story of Lazarus by another J.C. in the Bible,” Brown tells me. “When you think about folks like myself and Joe Biden, who looked like they didn’t have a chance to win, our J.C., Jim Clyburn, gave us his stamp of approval and resurrected what had been perceived by many as an impossible victory.”
My new TIME profile of Clyburn attempts to take stock of the status and trajectory of Black political power in America, a cause to which the low-key Southerner has devoted his life. In a series of interviews in South Carolina and D.C., Clyburn was critical of both today’s left-wing activists and his own party’s out-of-touch messaging. We talked about everything from his retirement plans to his role in getting Biden’s infrastructure bill through the House last year to his history with Justice Clarence Thomas. You’ll learn Clyburn’s fascinating, little-known backstory, including his activism in the ’60s civil rights movement:
In 1960, as a student at South Carolina State College and leader in the newly founded Congress of Racial Equality, Clyburn led a march of 1,000 students through Orangeburg to demand the desegregation of local establishments. Officers commanded the quiet, orderly marchers to stop “disturbing the peace,” but said nothing to the howling white mob pursuing them. The police turned fire hoses on the protesters and slammed Clyburn into a cruiser; it took all his self-control to maintain his commitment to nonviolence as 388 marchers were arrested. With the local jails full, some were housed for days in an outdoor stockade, wearing wet clothes in freezing weather, passing around cigarette lighters to warm their hands.
Read the piece here. (With terrific photos by Mike Belleme, who also took the photo at the top of this email.)