Barbara Jordan

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Barbara Charline Jordan
Barbara Jordan
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Texas's 18th district
In office
1973–1979
Preceded by Bob Price
Succeeded by Mickey Leland
Born February 21, 1936
Houston, Texas
Died January 17, 1996
Austin, Texas
Political party Democratic
Profession Attorney
Religion Unknown

Barbara Charline Jordan (February 21, 1936 – January 17, 1996) was an American politician from Texas. She served as a Congresswoman in the United States House of Representatives from 1973 to 1979. Jordan was born in Houston's Fifth Ward. Her parents were Rev. Benjamin M. Jordan and Arlyne (Patten) Jordan. Barbara Jordan attended Wheatley High School and graduated magna cum laude from Texas Southern University in 1956 and from Boston University Law School in 1959. She passed the Bar Exams in Massachusetts and Texas before returning to Houston to open a law practice. Active in the Kennedy-Johnson presidential campaign of 1960, Jordan wanted to be a part of change. She unsuccessfully ran for the Texas House of Representatives in 1962 and 1964. Her persistence won her a seat in the Texas Senate in 1966, becoming the first African American state senator since 1883 and the first black woman to serve in that body. Reelected to a full term in the Texas Senate in 1968, she served until 1972. She was the first African-American female to serve as president pro tem of the state senate and served for one day as acting governor of Texas in 1972. Barbara Jordan was also a lesbian.[1] She had a two decade relationship with partner, Nancy Earl.[2]

In 1972, she was elected to the United States House of Representatives, becoming the first black woman from a Southern state to serve in the House. She received extensive support from former President Lyndon Johnson, who helped her secure a position on the House Judiciary Committee.

In 1974, she made an influential televised speech before the House Judiciary Committee supporting the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. Her legislative accomplishments include the renewal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and expansion of that act to cover language minorities. This extended protection to Hispanics in Texas which was opposed by Texas Governor Dolph Briscoe and Secretary of State Mark White. Her speech at the 1976 Democratic National Convention is considered by many historians to have been the best convention keynote speech in modern history. She sponsored the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, legislation that required banks to lend and make services available to underserved poor and minority communities. Jordan retired from politics in 1979 and became a professor at the University of Texas at Austin Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. She again was a keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in 1992. In 1995, Jordan chaired a congressional commission that advocated increased restriction of immigration and increased penalties on employers that violated US immigration regulations.

In 1973, Jordan began to suffer from multiple sclerosis. She began to have difficulty climbing stairs, and she started using a cane and eventually a wheelchair. She kept the state of her health out of the press so well that in the KUT radio documentary Rediscovering Barbara Jordan, former president Bill Clinton stated that he wanted to nominate Jordan for the United States Supreme Court, but by the time he could do so, Jordan's health problems prevented him from nominating her.[3]

Jordan was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994. It was only one of many honors given her, including election into both the Texas and National Women's Hall of Fame. In 1995, she was awarded the prestigious United States Military Academy's Sylvanus Thayer Award, becoming only the second female awardee. On January 19, 1996, Jordan lay in state at the LBJ Library on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin. She was buried in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin, and was the first black woman interred there. Her papers are housed at the Barbara Jordan Archives at Texas Southern University.

The main terminal at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport is named after her.

Her seat in Congress is currently held by African-American Democrat Sheila Jackson-Lee.

[edit] Quotes

"We, the people". It is a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed, on the seventeenth of September in 1787, 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 in "We, the people."

"My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution."

"The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform decries hostility and discrimination against immigrants as antithetical to the traditions and interests of the country. At the same time, we disagree with those who would label efforts to control immigration as being inherently anti-immigrant. Rather, it is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest."

"If the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the United States will not reach the offenses charged here, then perhaps that 18th-century Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th-century paper shredder."

"Don't call for black power or green power. Call for brain power."

"It is reason, and not passion, which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision."

"There is no way that I can equate discrimination on the basis of sexual preference with discrimination on the basis of skin color."

"Many seek only to satisfy their private work -- wants; to satisfy their private interests. But this is the great danger America faces -- that we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual; each seeking to satisfy private wants. If that happens, who then will speak for America? Who then will speak for the common good?"

"We cannot improve on the system of government handed down to us by the founders of the Republic. There is no way to improve upon that. But what we can do is to find new ways to implement that system and realize our destiny."

"I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which man structurally does not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He's just incapable of it."

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Encyclopedia of GLBTQ Culture
  2. ^ Jordan never made any public pronouncement about her sexuality. Her obituaries generally referred to Earl as her "longtime companion". Many sources unhesitatingly describe Jordan as a lesbian. For example:
    • Kathy Belge, [1], About:Lesbian Life. Accessed 6 March 2007.
    For some discussion of how this has been handled (especially by LGBT magazine The Advocate), see: See discussion of this in:
    • Clay Smith, Two Bios of Barbara, Austin Chronicle, Volume 18, Number 24, February 12, 1999. Accessed 6 March 2007.
  3. ^ Rediscovering Barbara Jordan, KUT, February 8, 2006. Transcript online on the KUT web site, accessed 4 November 2006.

[edit] External links

Preceded by
W. T. “Bill” Moore		 Texas State Senator
from District 11 (Houston)
1967–1973		 Succeeded by
Chet Brooks
Preceded by
Bob Price		 Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Texas's 18th congressional district
1973–1979		 Succeeded by
Mickey Leland
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../b/a/r/Barbara_Jordan_3cac.html"
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