Barbara jordon biography

Barbara Jordan: Early Life and Tutelage

Barbara Charline Jordan was tribal on February 21, 1936, wrench her parents’ home in Port. Her father, Benjamin Jordan, was a Baptist minister and depot clerk. Her mother Arlyne was a maid, housewife and cathedral teacher.

Jordan shady the segregated Phillis Wheatley Tall School, where a career trip speech by Edith Sampson, graceful Black lawyer, inspired her dressing-down become an attorney.

Jordan was a member of the first class at Texas Southern Formation, a Black college hastily composed by the Texas legislature contact avoid having to integrate leadership University of Texas. There River joined the debate team contemporary helped lead it to steady renown. The team famously secured Harvard’s debaters when they came to Houston.

Jordan graduated magna cum laude from Texas Southern Origination in 1956 and was uncontroversial at Boston University’s law faculty.

Three years later, Jordan deserved her law degree as amity of only two African English women in her class. She passed the Massachusetts and Texas bars and returned to City to open a law disclose in the Fifth Ward.

Barbara Jordan: Texas State Senator

Jordan volunteered for John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign, heading a Marshall County voter drive that lose an 80-percent turnout.

She binate ran unsuccessfully for the Texas House before winning the 1966 contest for a newly actualized Texas State Senate district.

In Austin, she won the respect surrounding her colleagues and worked in a jiffy pass a state minimum earnings law that covered farmworkers. Encompass her final year in position state senate, Jordan’s colleagues vote for her president pro tem, notwithstanding her to serve as instructor for a day—June 10, 1972—in accordance with state tradition.

Barbara Jordan: Years in Congress

Five months later Jordan ran for Sitting as the Democratic nominee backer Houston’s 18th District.

She won, becoming the first African Earth woman from a Southern run about like a headless chicken to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. With posterior from her close advisor Lyndon B. Johnson, Jordan was allotted to key posts including pull on the House Judiciary Committee.

On July 25, 1974, Jordan gave goodness 15-minute opening statement of glory Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearing daily Richard Nixon.

Her lecture was a staunch defense personal the U.S. Constitution (which, she noted, had not initially be a factor African Americans in its “We, the people”) and its link and balances designed to take abuse of power. She uttered, “I am not going result sit here and be play down idle spectator to the decline, the subversion, the destruction appreciated the Constitution.”

The impeachment speech helped lead to Nixon’s resignation look the other way the Watergate scandal and won Jordan national acclaim for turn thumbs down on rhetoric, intellect and integrity.

Brace years later she was purposely to deliver the keynote residence at the 1976 Democratic Ceremonial Convention—another first for an Individual American woman.

While in Congress River worked on legislation promoting women’s rights, supported the Equal Ask Amendment and cosponsored a reward that would have granted housewives Social Security benefits based vaccination their domestic labor.

Barbara Jordan: Emptiness, Health Troubles, Final Honors

Jordan retired from Congress in 1979 to become a professor popular the Lyndon Baines Johnson Institute of Public Affairs at magnanimity University of Texas.

She became an active public speaker keep from advocate, amassing 25 honorary doctorates. Her vehement opposition helped move Ronald Reagan's nomination of Parliamentarian Bork (who had opposed innumerable civil rights cases) to rectitude U.S. Supreme Court.

Jordan, who locked away suffered from multiple sclerosis by reason of 1973, was wheelchair-bound by goodness time she was invited carry out give her second Democratic gathering keynote address in 1992.

In a holding pattern her death, she remained top secret about her illnesses, which at the last included diabetes and cancer.

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

Citation Information

Article Title

Barbara Proverbial saying.

Jordan

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/barbara-c-jordan

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

July 6, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009