SOUTH CAROLINA — Governor Henry McMaster convened a special legislative session on Friday to consider a redistricting proposal that would dismantle the sixth congressional district represented by U.S. Rep. James Clyburn. President Donald Trump had urged South Carolina Republican lawmakers to tear up the arrangement and redraw key congressional districts.

Six of South Carolina's seven U.S. congressional districts are held by Republicans. Clyburn, a veteran of the civil rights movement, has been the state's only Black member of Congress since taking office in 1993, and the only Black representative South Carolina has sent to Congress since 1897.

"I'm gonna run no matter what," Clyburn said. He drew a distinction between map changes and efforts targeting Black voters: "Aggressive redistricting efforts, that's one thing. To be suppressive of Black voter strength, that's another thing."

Clyburn and the NAACP previously challenged South Carolina's 2020 congressional redistricting on grounds that it constituted a racial gerrymander. On Tuesday, state Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey rejected the call for redistricting and suggested that removing Democrats from the sixth district could imperil neighboring Republicans in a tight election year.

The sixth district begins on the southern border with Georgia in the suburbs of Savannah and extends about 100 miles north to wind around the heart of Charleston, cutting through farmland to the state capital of Columbia, approximately 115 miles north of Charleston. It takes in Charleston's high-end shopping district on King Street, the antebellum state capitol building, the Gullah Geechee coastal homeland and two historically Black colleges. Barnwell and Allendale counties, within the district, contain some of the lowest-income populations in the United States.

U.S. Census Bureau estimates indicate that about 46% of residents in the sixth district are Black. Roughly one-quarter of South Carolina's population is Black, and about one-quarter of the state's Black residents live in the sixth district.

The district was created roughly 36 years ago through a pact between civil rights leaders and the state's white conservative political apparatus. In 1990, Democrats controlled the state legislature but had been losing white political support for 25 years following passage of the Voting Rights Act. The 1990 census showed Black residents made up about one-third of the state's population, and legislators crafted a majority-Black congressional district. After its creation, the multiracial coalition that had kept Democrats in power at the state level broke apart, and many Democratic lawmakers either left office or switched parties.

"We've been voting for Democrats for 100 years and we're no better off. We will vote with your map on the condition that you draw one congressional district where an African American can be elected," said Eaddy Roe Willard, a Republican activist in South Carolina, recalling the bargain.

In Congress, Clyburn served as House Majority Whip from 2007 to 2011 and from 2019 to 2022. He directed federal funds to improve South Carolina's highway system and expand rural broadband access. He advanced a 10-20-30 federal funding formula that requires a minimum of 10% of federal investments go to communities where at least 20% of residents had lived below the federal poverty line for 30 consecutive years. In 2020, his endorsement of Joe Biden revived Biden's campaign and helped him win South Carolina's Democratic primary. The U.S. Supreme Court has effectively gutted a major section of the Voting Rights Act that prevented racial discrimination.