Thompson briefed National Press Foundation fellows in September 2024: Jan. 6 Committee Chair Bennie Thompson on What to Expect This Election.

Congressman Bennie G. Thompson is an elected member of the United States House of Representatives from Mississippi’s 2^nd Congressional District. Congressman Thompson claimed his seat in the House on April 20, 1993. He is a native of Bolton, Mississippi, and considers it an honor to walk the path Mississippi civil rights icons paved decades ago. Congressman Thompson understands the challenges many families in Mississippi face each and every day.

Serving his 15th term in the United States House of Representatives, Congressman Thompson has spent his entire career fighting to improve the lives of all people. He is the longest-serving African American elected official in the State of Mississippi and the lone Democrat in the Mississippi Congressional Delegation. He began his grassroots political activism being a civil rights champion through the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) while a student at Tougaloo College. He organized voter registration drives for African Americans throughout the Mississippi Delta on behalf of the organization before graduating and following in the footsteps of his mother by becoming a schoolteacher.