Barbara Jordan

Barbara Charline Jordan (February 21, 1936 – January 17, 1996) was an American politician, attorney, and educator. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate since Reconstruction, the first woman descendant of American slavery elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and one of the first two African Americans elected to the U.S. House from the former Confederacy since 1901, alongside Andrew Young of Georgia.

Known for her oratorical abilities, Jordan achieved national fame for her televised opening statement at the House Judiciary Committee hearings during the impeachment process against Richard Nixon. In 1976, she became the first African American, and the first woman, to deliver a keynote address at a Democratic National Convention. Together with other African American politicians in the south who were elected after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, she worked to transform the Democratic Party from a party of segregation into a vehicle for increased Black political participation and representation.

Following her retirement from Congress, Jordan taught at the University of Texas at Austin, delivered numerous public lectures, remained active in Democratic Party politics, and served as chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous other honors. She was the first African-American woman to be buried in the Texas State Cemetery.

Early life, family, and education

Barbara Charline Jordan was born in the Fifth Ward neighborhood of Houston, Texas. Jordan's childhood was centered on church life at the Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church. Her mother was Arlyne Patten Jordan, a teacher in the church and a maid. Her father was Benjamin Jordan, a Baptist preacher and a warehouse worker. Jordan would recite poetry at the church and would sing gospel music with her sisters. In 1949, Jordan's father joined the Greater Pleasant Hill Baptist Church as the full-time pastor.

Through her mother, Jordan was the great-granddaughter of Edward Patton, who was one of the last African American members of the Texas House of Representatives prior to disenfranchisement of Black Texans under Jim Crow. Barbara Jordan was the youngest of three children. Her older siblings were Rose Mary Jordan McGowan and Bennie Creswell Jordan (1933–2000).

Jordan attended Roberson Elementary School. She graduated from Phillis Wheatley High School in 1952 with honors. At Wheatley, Jordan's oratorical abilities were developed through the support of her teachers and curriculum. Major influences included her English teacher Mrs. D. B. Reid, elocutionist Ashton J. Oliver, and speech and drama teacher Robert T. Holland. Jordan credited a speech she heard in her high school years by Edith S. Sampson with inspiring her to become an attorney.

Educated in Houston's public schools before the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Jordan grew up in an era of continued racial segregation, but Houston civil rights activists in the NAACP won important victories that also shaped her early life, including a successful local campaign to equalize salaries for Black and white teachers in 1943. Smith v. Allwright, a 1944 Supreme Court case that overturned the white primary, began in Houston. In 1946, Houstonian Heman Sweatt challenged segregation in higher education by applying to law school at the University of Texas at Austin (UT). The state of Texas denied his admission on account of race and instead created a separate law school for Black students at Houston's Texas Southern University. In 1950, the Supreme Court ruling in Sweatt v. Painter required the law school in Austin to integrate, but the first Black undergraduates would not enroll at UT until 1956, four years after Jordan's high school graduation.

In the meantime, significant growth was occurring at Texas Southern University (TSU), where Jordan enrolled in 1952 and majored in political science and history. At TSU, Jordan pledged Delta Gamma chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. She also became a national champion debater, learning from her coach, Thomas Freeman, defeating opponents from Yale and Brown, and tying a team from Harvard University. She graduated magna cum laude in 1956.

College experiences as a teenager made Jordan more acutely aware of Jim Crow's injustices. The commute from her Fifth Ward home to the Third Ward campus required a long ride on segregated buses, as she later recalled: "There was a little plaque on the bus near the back that said, 'colored' and when I'd get on, I'd have to go all the way back to that little plaque and I was passing empty seats all the time." On trips to debate competitions across the south, Jordan and fellow TSU students often stayed in Black-owned hotels or the homes of Black families because they were barred from segregated accommodations. Such experiences contributed to her decision to pursue her dream of becoming an attorney outside of Texas.

She attended Boston University School of Law, graduating in 1959.

Early career

Jordan taught political science at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama for a year. In 1960, she returned to Houston and started a private law practice. During that time, the 24-year-old Jordan was one of only two black women attorneys in Texas. To start off her career, Jordan became the first Black woman to work as an administrative assistant to a county judge, Bill Elliott. Jordan began her work in politics in 1960 when she became a volunteer for the John F. Kennedy-Lyndon B. Johnson campaign, traveling to African American churches in Houston to encourage people to vote.

Political career

Texas Senate

Jordan campaigned unsuccessfully in 1962 and 1964 for the Texas House of Representatives. Along with Curtis Graves and Joe Lockridge, she was one of three African American members elected in 1966 to the Texas Legislature, the first ones since 1896. With Jordan elected to the Texas Senate, she became the first black woman to serve in that body. She served the Eleventh Senate District in Houston, which had just been created after Kilgarlin v. Martin (1965) in which the federal court demanded redistricting of the Texas Legislature because densely populated urban areas were underrepresented in comparison to rural areas. In a speech at Rice University following the district's creation, but before her election, Jordan said, "For the first time in Texas, we are going to have legislators who represent people, not cattle."

The Texas Senate in 1966 consisted of thirty white men and Jordan. With Jordan experiencing racism and sexism from her colleagues, Houston community members were unsure of how much of a difference Jordan could make serving in the Senate. Aware of the challenges she would face, Jordan's goal was to be respected by the white conservatives in the Senate. One of the ways she accomplished this was by befriending Dorsey Hardeman, who was seen as the most powerful man in the body, and Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes. Jordan ran as a liberal Democrat, but she had strong relationships with the conservative wing of the Texas Democratic Party. Her efforts in her first term led to her being unanimously elected as outstanding freshman member by her colleagues.

Re-elected to a full term in the Texas Senate in 1968, Jordan served until 1972. She was the first African-American woman to serve as president pro tempore of the state senate and served one day, June 10, 1972, as acting governor of Texas. Jordan was the first African-American woman to serve as governor of a state. Additionally, Jordan was nominated to serve on federal commissions by President Lyndon Johnson after she was elected to the Senate; the commissions worked on housing and income maintenance. During her time in the Texas Legislature, Jordan sponsored or cosponsored some 70 bills. Jordan was an advocate for her constituents and the working class while in the Texas Senate. Some of her accomplishments include developing Texas' first minimum wage law and funding programs to fight against hate crimes.

Jordan's influence in the Senate and her relationship with Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes shaped her path to U.S. Congress. Redistricting of Texas began after the 1970 census, which included the possibility of a new congressional seat in Houston. Barnes named Jordan vice-chair of the redistricting committee, and this resulted in Jordan having the ability to draw her own district, the Eighteenth Congressional District. Jordan received 81% of the vote in 1972 to win the Democratic nomination to the U.S. House seat.