. Carolina South Carolina at a Glance State Profile - Gov. Hodges (D) - Sen. Thurmond (R) - Sen. Hollings (D) Presidential Politics Congressional Districting - 01 - Brown (R) - 02 - Wilson (R) - 03 - Graham (R) - 04 - DeMint (R) - 05 - Spratt Jr. (D) - 06 - Clyburn (D) Almanac 2002 Home States & Districts Elected Officials For district profiles and additional information on the elected officials of South Carolina, please use the pull-down menu above.

South Carolina was first settled by planters from Barbados, bringing with them a tropical plantation economy, which they transferred to the not quite tropical climate of the Carolina coastal lowlands. Here the flat Low Country and many islands are laced with sluggish-flowing rivers and swamps, and here the planters brought thousands of slaves directly from Africa. Colonial South Carolina was one of the richest parts of North America, with dazzling Georgian architecture in Charleston and classic plantation gardens; the planters built great irrigation systems and grew rice and cotton and the dye-plant indigo, all heavily in demand in Britain and elsewhere. And of course all this wealth was built on the slave labor of thousands of African-Americans, many of them still speaking their ancestral languages, or a patois mixing them with English. A majority of colonial South Carolinians were black slaves; so were most residents of the lowlands when the Civil War started with the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, although by that time there were also many free blacks in Charleston, some of whom owned slaves themselves.

South Carolina's black heritage has left an imprint on American culture, and is still apparent in the lowlands today. The special accents and dialects of lowland blacks were long retained: Traces of Gullah and other accents still can be found on lowland islands and in the Charleston accent, which to outsiders seems often incomprehensible (how many C-SPAN watchers click on closed-caption text when Senator Ernest Hollings speaks?). The poverty that was the almost universal lot of lowland blacks after the Civil War has only in the last generation been alleviated, as development came to the coast and the long cultural isolation of its people dissipated. But many blacks who grew up here have long since left, leaving after high school graduation on the bus for New York, nicknamed "the chicken-bone special" because of the fried chicken their families packed for the journey.

The 6th Congressional District, created in 1992 to have a black majority and modified slightly in 1994, includes very little of the coast, now mostly lined with affluent condominium communities; but it does include most of the geographic expanse of Low Country South Carolina. Its erose boundaries are designed to include the black central city neighborhoods of Charleston and Columbia but leave in the adjacent 1st and 2d districts their affluent white city and suburban areas. The 6th District includes much of Orangeburg, home of the historically black South Carolina State University, and Florence, at the center of the Pee Dee tobacco-growing country in eastern South Carolina.

The congressman from the 6th is James Clyburn, a Democrat elected in 1992. Clyburn grew up in Sumter, the son of a minister. In 1960 he was one of seven young people who organized the state's first sit-ins, at a five-and-dime store in the Orangeburg town square; in February 2001, Governor Jim Hodges apologized for the massacre that took place there in 1968, when highway patrolmen killed three protestors and wounded 27 others. Clyburn worked as a teacher, in government antipoverty programs, and on the staff of Governor John West. In 1974 he became state Human Affairs commissioner, serving 18 years under Republican and Democratic governors; when criticized for working for Republican Carroll Campbell, Clyburn got him to back the state's first fair housing act. Twice he ran for secretary of State, losing narrowly. In 1992 Clyburn effectively won the 6th District seat in the Democratic primary, with 56% of the vote against four black opponents, all with serious claims for the nomination; the white Democratic incumbent in the old 6th District, Robin Tallon, at the last minute decided not to run. Clyburn, well known statewide, ran first or second in each major center and piled up 88% in his home county of Sumter.

Clyburn, the first black to represent South Carolina in Congress since 1897, has a moderate-to-liberal voting record. He has good working relationships with leading businessmen and Republicans and--like many South Carolinians before him--has focused on local priorities first. He supported the balanced budget amendment and term limits, and joined the moderate New Democrat Coalition at its inception in 1997, the only black to do so. On the Transportation Committee, he worked on local projects like airport funding and the South Carolina Heritage Corridor, pushed for funds to restore buildings at historically black colleges and universities, and won a $175 million annual increase in the state's share. He won a fight with Strom Thurmond to get the courthouse in Columbia named after Matthew Perry, South Carolina's first black federal judge, appointed by Thurmond. Against campaign finance critics in his own party, he has defended PACs as the voice of the little guy. When cigarette tax increases have been proposed, he has urged safeguards for tobacco farmers.

In 1999, he got a seat on the Appropriations Committee, where he continued his focus on local projects, including $30 million for the Cooper River bridge replacement in Charleston. When Mike Forbes switched parties to the Democrats, Clyburn agreed to take a temporary leave of absence so that Forbes could keep an Appropriations seat; Forbes lost his Democratic primary in 2000, and Clyburn returned to Appropriations in 2001. Also in 1999, he became chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, where he showed another side to his reputation for being conciliatory and non-confrontational. He shared credit when Bill Clinton made a recess appointment in December 2000 of Roger Gregory, the first black on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He urged the Democratic National Committee to become more responsive to blacks, and sought to create a Policy and Leadership Institute for the Caucus to develop new liberal positions and protect black lawmakers in redistricting. But he ran into opposition when he supported the King family's efforts to have the Library of Congress purchase Dr. Martin Luther King's papers for perhaps $20 million. After the 2000 presidential election, he was among those who complained of an "election stolen from us" by intimidation of voters in Florida.

Back home, he helped to energize voters in the 1998 campaign that resulted in the election of Governor Jim Hodges and the re-election of the seemingly endangered Hollings. Clyburn has been re-elected easily to the House, but said he would not run for the Senate seat in 2002. Redistricting requires the 6th to add 68,000 people, which could easily be done by adding black areas in Columbia and rural counties from the 2nd district, which must shed 62,000 people. Republicans control the legislature, but it is highly unlikely that they will try to eliminate South Carolina's one black-majority district, for it removes heavily Democratic precincts from the adjoining districts.

Cook's Call:
Safe. The 6th was the slowest-growing district in South Carolina during the 1990s and will need to pick up about 70,000 new residents in redistricting. Still, this seat will be very safe for Clyburn in 2002.

The People:

• Pop. 2000: 600,226; Pop. 1990: 581,452, up 3.2% 1990-2000.
• 37.2% White, 60.9% Black, 0.4% Asian, 0.2% Amer. Indian, 0.7% Two+ races, 0.5% Other. 1.4% Hispanic origin.

2000 Presidential Vote Gore (D) 112,771 (63%) Bush (R) 65,235 (36%) Nader (Green) 1,426 (1%)

1996 Presidential Vote Clinton (D) 113,096 (65%) Dole (R) 53,614 (31%) Perot (I) 5,525 (3%)