\u201cWe\u2019re Going to Listen to Mama\u201d<\/p>\n
Their talk then pivoted to Clyburn\u2019s family and their influence on many of his pivotal decisions. Clyburn smiled as he recalled his first contact with the former Emily English, two South Carolina State undergraduates who split a hamburger as Clyburn awaited bail for protesting. Yet what Clyburn believed to be serendipity was, in actuality, by design. Decades later, Clyburn discovered that Emily had spotted him earlier \u2014 with another girl, no less \u2014 and declared then that he would be her husband.<\/p>\n
An accomplished activist and librarian herself, Clyburn cited Emily\u2019s fastidiousness and attention to detail as indispensable to both his career and interpersonal relationships. In another anecdote, Clyburn was once oblivious to a \u201cproblem\u201d a fellow churchgoer had with him until Emily brought it to his attention. Not only did she insist he discover the issue, but she also had the person\u2019s phone number at the ready for Clyburn to call.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe turned this little wayward boy into a United States congressman,\u201d Clyburn attested.<\/p>\n
Clyburn said that before Emily\u2019s passing in September 2019, she advised him to endorse Joe Biden ahead of the impending presidential election. As Biden stumbled through the initial primaries, attention turned to South Carolina, and Clyburn consulted with his daughters Mignon, Jennifer, and Angela, on whether to heed their mother\u2019s counsel or consider alternatives.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of them said, \u2018We\u2019re going to listen to Mama,\u2019\u201d Clyburn said with a smile.<\/p>\n
Clyburn met with Biden and promised an endorsement if Biden would commit to appointing a Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court, an idea Clyburn gleaned from his daughters, who argued that such a pledge would galvanize their electorate. Biden complied, Clyburn endorsed Biden immediately after, and Biden proceeded to win the South Carolina primary, becoming the party\u2019s nominee and eventually the 46th President of the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe day of that endorsement of Joe Biden that everybody thinks got him elected \u2014 and they give me credit for it, so I don\u2019t deny it \u2014 [Emily] played a big role in that,\u201d Clyburn said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe\u2019re Going to Listen to Mama\u201d Their talk then pivoted to Clyburn\u2019s family and their influence on many…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-542856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}