U.S. Representative Barbara Jordan

U.S. Representative Barbara Jordan (1936-1996), lawmaker. Barbara Charline Jordan was born in Houston, the daughter of a Baptist minister and a housewife. While in high school, a speech by the prominent black attorney Edith S. Sampson inspired her to pursue a legal career. She was also shaped by her grandfather, who taught her “the lesson of independence and being one’s own person…I never had to apologize for whatever I was doing…I didn’t look around for excuses for non-achievement. I just decided that what one wants to do, one proceeds to do it.” At Texas Southern University, she became a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority and a nationally ranked debater who helped her school defeat Yale and tie Harvard. After graduating in 1956 with a history-political science double major, she graduated from Boston University School of Law in 1959, then taught political science at Tuskegee University for a year before opening a private practice in Houston. She first gained the attention of Democratic Party leaders by helping to organize black voters for John F. Kennedy’s successful 1960 presidential campaign. The Civil Rights Movement was bringing an end to the practices that had prevented southern blacks from voting since the late 1800s, and after making two unsuccessful runs for the Texas House of Representatives in 1962 and 1964, in 1966 she was elected to the Texas State Senate, making her Texas’ first black state senator since 1883 and its first ever black female member. During her two terms in the state senate she helped pass laws that created the Texas Fair Employment Practices Commission, established the state’s first minimum wage law, and required antidiscrimination clauses in business contracts. In 1972 her colleagues elected her president pro term: the person who leads the senate in the absence of the lieutenant governor. Texas had a tradition of honoring the president pro term each year by naming them “Governor for a Day,” and Jordan was so honored on 10 June 1972, making her the first and still only African American woman to serve as governor of a state.

In 1972 Jordan was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, representing a district that included most of downtown and inner city Houston. She became the second black woman to serve in Congress and the first black congressperson from a former Confederate state since 1901. She worked with the several other black and female congresspersons but also established close relations with white lawmakers, especially fellow Texans, in an effort to gain power and influence within the system. This resulted in her being appointed to the House Judiciary Committee. In July 1974, this committee held hearings on whether or not to approve articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon for interfering with an investigation into his allegedly illegal activity, including firing government officials who were part of the investigation, and for failing to pay taxes. In a speech given during these hearings, Jordan laid out the concept of constitutional government and how it applied to the current situation. She began by noting that when the Constitution was initially written, “I was not included in that ‘We, the people.’ I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision I have finally been included.” She then addressed the specific pieces of evidence against Nixon, using quotes from James Madison and a former Supreme Court Justice for each one to argue that they supported impeachment.  In closing, she stated “If the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the United States will not reach the offenses charged here, then perhaps that eighteenth century Constitution should be abandoned to a twentieth century paper shredder.” This speech helped persuade the Judiciary Committee to approve three articles of impeachment. A week later, Nixon resigned from office. Despite having served in Congress for less than two years, she had become one of the most prominent politicians in the country. One billboard in Houston read “Thank you, Barbara Jordan, for explaining the Constitution to us.”

During her three terms in Congress, Jordan sponsored or cosponsored more than 300 bills and resolutions, including the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which required banks to improve their efforts to make loans and other services available to poor and minority communities, and expanding the Voting Rights Act to include people of Asian, Native American, and Latinx ancestry. In 1975 she served on the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, which is in charge of appointing Democratic representatives to various committees and advising party leaders on policy. During the 1976 presidential election season, she was briefly considered as a vice presidential candidate and asked to give a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. Like her Judiciary Committee speech two years earlier, she noted how her very presence represented changes in American society, beginning “It was one hundred and forty-four years ago that members of the Democratic Party first met in convention to select a Presidential candidate…But there is something different about tonight. There is something different about tonight. What is different? What is special? I, Barbara Jordan, am a keynote speaker…I feel that notwithstanding the past my presence here is one additional piece of evidence that the American Dream need not forever be deferred.” She also addressed ongoing problems of inequality and the government’s role in addressing them, asserting “We believe that the government which represents the authority of all the people, not just one interest group, but all the people, has an obligation to actively – underscore actively – seek to remove those obstacles which would block individual achievement – obstacles emanating from race, sex, economic condition. The government must remove them, seek to remove them.” In 2009, the American Rhetoric organization ranked this speech fifth “Top 100 Speeches of the 20^th Century” list; her 1974 Judiciary Committee speech is ranked thirteenth.

Jordan decided not to seek reelection in 1978. She became a professor of ethics and public policy at the University of Texas and served as a member of the Board of Jurors for the Peabody Awards. She published her autobiography Barbara Jordan, a Self-Portrait in 1979. She was elected to the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame in 1984 and the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1990. In 1992 she was again a keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention, giving her speech from a wheelchair due to her long struggles with multiple sclerosis and leukemia. The candidate nominated there, Bill Clinton, awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and also considered nominating her to the U.S. Supreme Court but decided not to do so due to her poor health. In the last few years of her life she chaired the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, which attacked “hostility and discrimination against immigrants as antithetical to the traditions and interests of the country” but also drew criticism for recommending that immigration be reduced. Barbara Jordan died of pneumonia in Austin, Texas in 1996. After her death, it was revealed that she had been a closeted lesbian; although this was not known at the time, this also made her the first lesbian to serve in the Texas legislature, to serve in the U.S. Congress, and to give a keynote address at a major party political convention. She was the first black woman buried in the Texas State Cemetery, which was originally a burial ground for Confederate soldiers. Named in her honor are the main terminal at the Austin airport, several K-12 schools in Texas, and the Jordan/Rustin Coalition, which mobilized African Americans in California to advocate for marriage equality.

©David Brodnax, Sr.