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Barbara Jordan Quotes From The Woman and Politician of Many Firsts

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These Barbara Jordan quotes reveal so much more about who she was. Barbara Jordan is an iconic lawyer, educator, and politician. But what is she best known for? Her accomplishments are many, and frankly, quite impressive and history-making. Barbara was the first African-American elected to the Texas…

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https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/385332.Barbara_Jordan

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Please observe the following park rules: Alcoholic beverages are prohibited; except by permit. Control noise levels - please be respectful of others. Cook only on designated camp stoves or barbeque grills; no open fires. Fireworks are prohibited; except by permit. Glass bottles or containers are prohibited. Harming wildlife is prohibited.

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Our Barbara Jordan Community Center is named after the former U.S. Representative and State Senator. Barbara Jordan grew up in Houston's Fifth Ward and was a tireless advocate for her community, rising to the top of her field while breaking down racial and gender barriers.

The Barbara Jordan Community Center is a great place for community members to gather and have meetings, events, small parties, etc. Whether you need a room for your club to brainstorm your next move, an auditorium to share your ideas and inspire others, or a kitchen to prepare some southern cooking, the Barbara Jordan Community Center has the space you need.

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Our Barbara Jordan Community Center is named after the former U.S. Representative and State Senator. Barbara Jordan grew up in Houston's Fifth Ward and was a tireless advocate for her community, rising to the top of her field while breaking down racial and gender barriers.

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Barbara Jordan: Life and legacy celebrated at Texas Capitol

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Barbara Jordan, Democratic National Convention Keynote Speech, 1976, part 1

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Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas in 1972, Barbara Jordan became the first Black woman elected to congress, and re-elected, from the deep South.

Before her election to Congress, she was a Texas State Senator, the first Black woman to serve there. Jordan captured the attention of the nation during the 1974 Nixon impeachment hearings. As a member of the House Judiciary Hearings, she served on the committee charged with hearing and evaluating the evidence bearing on the possible impeachment of then-President Nixon. It was on this committee that her incisive questioning and her impassioned defense of the Constitution made her a respected national figure.

In l976, Barbara Jordan became the first woman and first Black American to give the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention.

In 1978 she announced that she would not seek re-election and returned to Texas as a full professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. She remained there and became a counselor to Texas Governor Ann Richards. Her many honors included the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Year Honored: 1990

Birth: 1936 - 1996

Achievements: Government
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Jordan, Barbara - National Women's Hall of Fame

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Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas in 1972, Barbara Jordan became the first Black woman elected to congress, and re-elected, from the deep South. Before her election to Congress, she was a Texas State Senator, the first Black woman to serve there. Jordan captured the attention of the nation during the 1974...

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Contents

1. Barbara Jordan: Early Life and Education

2. Barbara Jordan: Texas State Senator

3. Barbara Jordan: Years in Congress

4. Barbara Jordan: Retirement, Health Troubles, Final Honors

Texas congresswoman Barbara Jordan (1936-1996) rose to the national stage from Houston's largely African American Fifth Ward, becoming a public defender of the U.S. Constitution and a leading presence in Democratic Party politics for two decades. She was the first black woman elected to the Texas state senate and the first black Texan in Congress. As a member of the House Judiciary Committee, she gave the influential opening speech of Richard Nixon's 1974 impeachment hearings. She retired after three terms in Congress to become a professor and policy advocate.

Barbara Jordan: Early Life and Education

Barbara Charline Jordan was born February 21, 1936, in her parents' home in Houston. Her father, Benjamin Jordan, was a Baptist minister and warehouse clerk. Her mother Arlyne was a maid, housewife and church teacher.

Did you know? Texas congresswoman Barbara Jordan's great-grandfather, Edward Patton, was one of several black representatives who served in the Texas legislature during Reconstruction.

Jordan attended the segregated Phillis Wheatley High School, where a career day speech by Edith Sampson, a black lawyer, inspired her to become an attorney. Jordan was a member of the inaugural class at Texas Southern University, a black college hastily created by the Texas legislature to avoid having to integrate the University of Texas. There Jordan joined the debate team and helped lead it to national renown. The team famously tied Harvard's debaters when they came to Houston.

Jordan graduated magna cum laude from Texas Southern University in 1956 and was accepted at Boston University's law school. Three years later, Jordan earned her law degree as one of only two African American women in her class. She passed the Massachusetts and Texas bars and returned to Houston to open a law office in the Fifth Ward.

Barbara Jordan: Texas State Senator

Jordan volunteered for John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign, heading a Harris County voter drive that yielded an 80-percent turnout. She twice ran unsuccessfully for the Texas House before winning the 1966 contest for a newly created Texas State Senate district.

In Austin she won the respect of her colleagues and worked to pass a state minimum wage law that covered farmworkers. In her final year in the state senate, Jordan's colleagues elected her president pro tem, allowing her to serve as governor for a day-June 10, 1972-in accordance with state tradition.

Barbara Jordan: Years in Congress

Five months later Jordan ran for Congress as the Democratic nominee for Houston's 18th District. She won, becoming the first African American woman from a Southern state to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. With support from her close advisor Lyndon B. Johnson, Jordan was appointed to key posts including on the House Judiciary Committee.

On July 25, 1974, Jordan gave the 15-minute opening statement of the Judiciary Committee's impeachment hearing for Richard Nixon. Her speech was a staunch defense of the U.S. Constitution (which, she noted, had not initially included African Americans in its "We, the people") and its checks and balances designed to prevent abuse of power. She said, "I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution."

The impeachment speech helped lead to Nixon's resignation over the Watergate scandal and won Jordan national acclaim for her rhetoric, intellect and integrity. Two years later she was asked to deliver the keynote address at the 1976 Democratic National Convention-another first for an African American woman.

While in Congress Jordan worked on legislation promoting women's rights, supported the Equal Rights Amendment and cosponsored a bill that would have granted housewives Social Security benefits based on their domestic labor.

Barbara Jordan: Retirement, Health Troubles, Final Honors

Jordan retired from Congress in 1979 to become a professor at the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. She became an active public speaker and advocate, amassing 25 honorary doctorates. Her vehement opposition helped derail George Bush's nomination of Robert Bork (who had opposed many civil rights cases) to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jordan, who had suffered from multiple sclerosis since 1973, was wheelchair-bound by the time she was invited to give her second Democratic convention keynote address in 1992. Until her death she remained private about her illnesses, which finally included diabetes and cancer.

In 1994 Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor. Jordan died of leukemia-related pneumonia on January 17, 1996. Breaking barriers even in death, she became the first African American to be buried among the governors, senators and congressmen in the Texas State Cemetery.

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Barbara Jordan: Early Life and Education Barbara Jordan: Texas State Senator Barbara Jordan: Years in Congress Barbara Jordan: Retirement, Health Troubles, Final Honors Texas congresswoman Barbara Jordan (1936-1996) rose to the national stage from Houston's largely African American Fifth Ward, becoming a public defender of the U.S.

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Barbara Jordan emerged as an eloquent and powerful interpreter of the Watergate impeachment investigation at a time when many Americans despaired about the Constitution and the country. As one of the first African Americans elected from the Deep South since 1898 and the first Black Congresswoman ever from that region, Jordan lent added weight to her message by her very presence on the House Judiciary Committee.

Barbara Charline Jordan was born in Houston, Texas, on February 21, 1936, one of three daughters of Benjamin M. Jordan and Arlyne Patten Jordan. Benjamin Jordan, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute, worked in a local warehouse before becoming pastor of Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church, which his family had long attended. Arlyne Jordan was an accomplished public speaker. Barbara Jordan was educated in the Houston public schools and graduated from Phyllis Wheatley High School in 1952. She earned a BA from Texas Southern University in 1956 and a law degree from Boston University in 1959. That same year, she was admitted to the Massachusetts and Texas bars, and she began to practice law in Houston in 1960. To supplement her income (she worked temporarily out of her parents' home), Jordan was employed as an administrative assistant to a county judge. ¹

Barbara Jordan's political turning point occurred when she worked on the John F. Kennedy presidential campaign in 1960. She eventually helped manage a highly organized get-out-the-vote program that served Houston's 40 African-American precincts. In 1962 and 1964, Jordan ran for the Texas house of representatives but lost both times, so in 1966 she ran for the Texas senate when court-enforced redistricting created a constituency that consisted largely of minority voters. Jordan won, defeating a white liberal and becoming the first African-American state senator in the U.S. since 1883 as well as the first Black woman ever elected to that chamber. ² The other 30 (male, white) senators received her coolly, but Jordan quickly earned a reputation as an effective legislator who pushed through bills establishing the state's first minimum wage law, anti-discrimination clauses in business contracts, and the Texas Fair Employment Practices Commission. On March 28, 1972, Jordan's peers elected her president pro tempore of the Texas senate, making her the first Black woman in America to preside over a legislative body. In seconding the nomination, one of Jordan's male colleagues on the other side of the chamber stood, spread his arms open, and said, "What can I say? Black is beautiful." ³ One of Jordan's responsibilities as president pro tempore was to serve as acting governor when the governor and lieutenant governor were out of the state. When Jordan filled that largely ceremonial role on June 10, 1972, she became the first Black chief executive in the nation.

In 1971 Jordan entered the race for the Texas congressional seat encompassing downtown Houston. The district had been redrawn after the 1970 Census and was composed of a predominantly African-American and Hispanic-American population. In the 1972 Democratic primary, Jordan faced Curtis Graves, another Black state legislator, who attacked her for being too close to the white establishment. Jordan blunted Graves's charges with her legislative credentials. "I'm not going to Washington and turn things upside down in a day," she told supporters at a rally. "I'll only be one of 435. But the 434 will know I'm there." 4 Jordan took the primary with 80 percent of the vote. In the general election, against Republican Paul Merritt, she won 81 percent of the vote. Along with Andrew Jackson Young Jr. of Georgia, Jordan became the first African American in the twentieth century elected to Congress from the Deep South. In the next two campaign cycles, Jordan overwhelmed her opposition, capturing 85 percent of the total vote in both general elections. ⁵

Representative Jordan's political philosophy from her days in the state legislature led her to focus on local issues. Civil rights and women's rights activists sometimes criticized her when she chose to favor her community interests rather than theirs. She followed this pattern in the House. "I sought the power points," she once said. "I knew if I were going to get anything done, [the congressional and party leaders] would be the ones to help me get it done." ⁶ Jordan was reluctant to commit herself fully to any one interest group or caucus, such as the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), of which she was a member. House women met informally too, but Jordan's attendance at those meetings was irregular, and she was noncommittal on most issues that were brought before the group. She was especially careful not to attach herself too closely to an agenda she had little control over that might impinge on her ability to navigate and compromise within the institutional power structure. "I am neither a black politician nor a woman politician," Jordan said in 1975. "Just a politician, a professional politician." ⁷

In both her Texas legislative career and in the U.S. House, Jordan made the conscious decision to pursue power within the established system. One of her first moves in Congress was to establish relationships with Members of the Texas delegation, which had strong institutional connections. Her attention to influence inside the House was demonstrated by where she sat in the House Chamber's large, theater-style seating arrangement. CBC members traditionally sat to the far left of the chamber, but Jordan chose to sit near the center aisle because she could hear better, be seen by the presiding officer, and save an open seat for colleagues who wanted to stop and chat. Her seating preference as well as her loyalty to the Texas delegation agitated fellow CBC members, but both were consistent with Jordan's model of seeking congressional influence. ⁸

Jordan also believed that an important committee assignment, one where she would be a trailblazer because of her gender and race, would magnify her influence. Thus, she disregarded suggestions that she accept a seat on the Education and Labor Committee and used her connection with Texan Lyndon B. Johnson-she had been his guest at the White House during her time as a state legislator-to secure a plum committee assignment on the Judiciary Committee. Securing former President Johnson's intercession with Wilbur Daigh Mills of Arkansas, the chairman of the Committee on Committees, she landed a seat on the Judiciary Committee, where she served for her three terms in the House. ⁹ In the 94th and 95th Congresses (1975-1979), she was also assigned to the Committee on Government Operations. ¹⁰

It was as a freshman Member of the Judiciary Committee, however, that Jordan earned national recognition. In the summer of 1974, as the committee considered articles of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon for crimes associated with the Watergate Scandal, Jordan delivered opening remarks that shook the committee room and the large television audience that had tuned in to the proceedings. "My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total," Jordan said. "I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." She then explained the reasoning behind her support of each of the five articles of impeachment against President Nixon. In conclusion, Jordan said that if her fellow committee members did not find the evidence compelling enough, "then perhaps the eighteenth-century Constitution should be abandoned to a twentieth-century paper shredder." Reaction to Jordan's statement was overwhelming. Jordan recalled that people swarmed around her car after the hearings to congratulate her, and many people sent the Texas Representative letters of praise. One person even posted a message on a series of billboards in Houston: "Thank you, Barbara Jordan, for explaining the Constitution to us." ¹¹ The Watergate impeachment hearings helped create Jordan's reputation as a respected national politician.

From her first days in Congress, Jordan encouraged colleagues to extend the federal protection of civil rights to more Americans. She introduced civil rights amendments to legislation authorizing law enforcement assistance grants and joined seven other members on the Judiciary Committee in opposing Gerald R. Ford's nomination as Vice President, citing a mediocre civil rights record. In 1975, when Congress voted to extend the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Jordan sponsored legislation that broadened the provisions of the act to include Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Although she voted for busing to enforce racial desegregation in public schools, she was one of the few African-American Members of Congress to question the utility of the policy. ¹²

Jordan's talent as a speaker continued to contribute to her national profile. In 1976 she became the first woman and the first African-American keynote speaker at a Democratic National Convention. Appearing after a subdued speech by Ohio Senator John Herschel Glenn Jr., Jordan energized the convention with her oratory. "We are a people in search of a national community," she told the delegates, "attempting to fulfill our national purpose, to create and sustain a society in which all of us are equal.... We cannot improve on the system of government, handed down to us by the founders of the Republic, but we can find new ways to implement that system and to realize our destiny." ¹³ Amid the historical perspective of the national bicentennial, and in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and Watergate, Jordan's message, like her commanding voice, resonated with Americans. She campaigned widely for Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, who defeated President Ford in the general election. Though Carter later interviewed Jordan for a Cabinet position, he did not offer her the position of U.S. Attorney General, the one post she said she would accept.

In 1978, downplaying reports about her poor health, Jordan declined to run for what would have been certain re-election to a fourth term, citing her "internal compass," which she said was pointing her "away from demands that are all consuming." ¹⁴ She also said she wanted to work more directly on behalf of her fellow Texans. Jordan was appointed the Lyndon Johnson Chair in National Policy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin, where she taught until the early 1990s. She continued to lecture widely on national affairs. In 1988 and 1992, she delivered speeches at the Democratic National Convention. Her 1992 keynote address was delivered from a wheelchair while she was in the midst of a lengthy battle with multiple sclerosis. In 1994 President William J. (Bill) Clinton appointed her to lead the Commission on Immigration Reform, a bipartisan group that delivered its findings in September of that year. Jordan received nearly two dozen honorary degrees and, in 1990, was named to the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca, New York. She never married and carefully guarded her private life. ¹⁵

Jordan died in Austin, Texas, on January 17, 1996, from pneumonia that was a complication of leukemia. ¹⁶ Newspapers across the country published extensive obituaries that celebrated her oratory, her defense of the Constitution, and the role she played in inspiring generations of minority women in politics. "She left Congress after only three terms, a mere six years," the editors of the New York Times wrote. "No landmark legislation bears her name. Yet few lawmakers in this century have left a more profound and positive impression on the nation than Barbara Jordan." ¹⁷

View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress

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JORDAN, Barbara Charline | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives

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Barbara Jordan emerged as an eloquent and powerful interpreter of the Watergate impeachment investigation at a time when many Americans despaired about the Constitution and the country. As one of the first African Americans elected from the Deep South since 1898 and the first Black Congresswoman ever from that region, Jordan lent added weight to her message by her very presence on the House Judiciary Committee.

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Barbara Jordan, in full Barbara Charline Jordan, (born February 21, 1936, Houston, Texas, U.S.-died January 17, 1996, Austin, Texas), American lawyer, educator, and politician who served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1973-79), representing Texas. She was the first African American congresswoman to come from the South.

Jordan was the youngest of three daughters in a close-knit family. As a high school student, she became a skilled public speaker, winning a national debate contest in 1952. She attended Texas Southern University in Houston, becoming a member of the debate team that tied Harvard University in a debate-one of her proudest college moments. Following graduation (magna cum laude in 1956), she attended Boston University Law School, where she was one of only two women-both African Americans from Houston-to graduate. She passed the Massachusetts bar exam but moved to Tuskegee Institute (later renamed Tuskegee University) in Alabama and taught there for one year before returning to Texas and gaining admittance to the bar there.

Jordan was an effective campaigner for the Democrats during the 1960 presidential election, and this experience propelled her into politics. In 1962 and 1964 she was an unsuccessful candidate for the Texas House of Representatives, but she was elected in 1966 to the Texas Senate, the first African American member since 1883 and the first woman ever elected to that legislative body.

Jordan's success in Texas politics came from her knowledge of and adherence to the rules of the political process. She went to great lengths to fit in and sought advice on committee assignments. Her own legislative work focused on the environment, antidiscrimination clauses in state business contracts, and urban legislation, the last being a political challenge in a state dominated by rural interests. She captured the attention of U.S. Pres. Lyndon Johnson, who invited her to the White House for a preview of his 1967 civil rights message.

Jordan remained in the Texas Senate until 1972, when she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas's 18th district. In the House, Jordan advocated legislation to improve the lives of minorities, the poor, and the disenfranchised and sponsored bills that expanded workers' compensation and strengthened the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to cover Mexican Americans in the Southwest.

Although she acquired a reputation as an effective legislator, Jordan did not become a national figure until 1974 during the Watergate scandal, when her participation in the hearings held by the House Judiciary Committee on the impeachment of U.S. Pres. Richard M. Nixon was televised nationwide. Her keynote address at the 1976 Democratic National Convention confirmed her reputation as one of the most commanding and articulate public speakers of her era.

Jordan decided not to seek a fourth term and retired from Congress in 1979. In that year also she published Barbara Jordan, a Self-Portrait. She then accepted a position at the University of Texas, Austin, where she taught at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs until her death. Despite her absence from Washington, D.C., she remained influential in political affairs. In the 1990s she served as an adviser on ethics in government for Texas Gov. Ann Richards and also was chairman for the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. In 1992 she again gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.

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Barbara Jordan, American lawyer, educator, and politician who served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1973-79), representing Texas. She was the first African American congresswoman to come from the South. Jordan gained national attention during the hearings on the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.