Barbara Jordan

Submitted by Barbara Chandler

Barbara Jordan was born in Houston, Texas in 1936. In high school, she was much influenced by guest speaker Edith S. Sampson who, at that time, was one of the nation’s few African-American female attorneys. Inspired to become an attorney herself, she graduated magna cum laude from Texas Southern University in 1956 and Boston University Law School in 1959. After passing the bar exams in both Massachusetts and Texas, she opened a law practice in Houston and was only the third African-American woman to be licensed in Texas.

She ran unsuccessfully for the Texas House of Representatives in 1962 and 1964. Because she was a lesbian, her advisors warned her to become more discreet and not bring her female companions on the campaign trail. Her third campaign for the state Senate was successful, making her the first African-American state senator since 1883 and the very first black woman to serve. She remained in that office until 1972 during which time she was the first black woman to serve as president pro-tem and even served as governor for one day.

After her tenure in the state Senate, she ran for, and won, a seat in the House of Representatives becoming the first black woman from a southern state to serve. President Lyndon Johnson helped her gain a seat on the House Judiciary Committee, a role which led to her delivering an influential, televised speech in support of the impeachment of President Richard Nixon in 1974. In 1976, she was considered a possible running mate to Jimmy Carter.

Two Democratic National Convention keynote speeches were delivered by her in 1976 and 1992. Her 1976 speech (the first delivered by an African-American woman) was ranked 5^th in the “Top American Speeches of the 20^th Century” and was considered by many historians to be the best convention keynote speech until the 2004 keynote by Barack Obama.

While in national politics, she focused on the underserved poor and minority communities supporting the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 which required banks to lend and make services available to these communities. Additionally, she supported renewal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and expansion of that act to cover language minorities. She retired from politics in1979 becoming an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Two years before her death, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton, just one of many awards she earned during her lifetime. Her death was in 1996 from multiple sclerosis which had begun in 1973. Her health issues were so kept out of the public eye that President Clinton wanted to appoint her to the Supreme Court and had no idea that she would not be physically fit to serve.

Article sourced by Wikipedia