Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees: Interview With Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC)
Interview
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Well, thank you very much for having me, Anderson.
First of all, absolutely none whatsoever. Unless you are looking for some way to whitewash history, I'm pretty interested in finding out what all is in that list of suggestions as to how they should teach history.
I'm wondering today, what we'll be talked about the Rosewood Massacre that had such an impact on Florida and I'm sure it would have an impact on anybody reading the history of Florida.
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It's a very inappropriate way to rewrite history. The leg irons, I suspect, were taken off of them, so they could turn it into gates.
I know a whole lot about blacksmithing and in Charleston, South Carolina, Philip Simmons, we celebrate him all the time. But that's not what this is. This is about whether or not people are being held against their will, irrespective of what their duties and responsibilities are to that system that they have brought into and did not ask to come into.
I've been saying for years that we should teach the full history of this country, the history of those who came here in search of freedom, as well as the history of those who came here, having lost their freedom. Those who came of their own free will, and those who came against their will. Those histories must be taught and taught truthfully, and I think that DeSantis is showing people every day why he is ill-prepared to be president of the United States
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Absolutely. In fact, we just recently opened the International African American Museum down in Charleston and the biggest exhibit, one of the biggest exhibits in there is called Carolina Gold, it is a room dedicated to what made the Charleston economy the biggest economy in this country, and it was rice.
And the people who knew how to do rice, how to harvest rice, how to build the rice paddies, that skill came to this country, in the heads of those enslaved people. They brought it from Africa with them.
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Well, we will so weaken this country until we lose respect around the world, it will be the end of not just this democracy, but it will be the end of this country as we know it.
And I think it's high time for people of goodwill to begin to speak up about this. You remember, Martin Luther King, Jr. in this letter from the Birmingham Jail told us that he was coming to the conclusion that the people of ill will, in our society, we're making a much better use of time than the people of goodwill.
And the people of goodwill must begin to you make better use of their times to fight off these foolish things coming from people who are looking to make political hay out of the misfortunes, families that are still suffering from that today.
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Thank you.
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