Historical Public Servants Barbara Jordan: A Politician Who Inspired Unity –By Anuj Shah “We are a people in a quandary about the present. We are a people in search of our future. We are a people in search of a national community.”1 native Houstonian, Barbara Charline Jordan was an attorney, legislator, and an educator who blazed countless trails in her illustrious career at both the state and national levels. Born in Houston in 1936, Jordan graduated at the top of her class at Phyllis Wheatley High School. She went on to Texas Southern University, where she was a star on the debate team and defeated competitors from the Ivy League universities. She then completed her law school education at Boston University School of Law in 1959. After practicing law privately for a few years, Jordan was elected to the Texas Senate in 1966, becoming the first African-American state senator since 1883 and the first Black woman to serve in that
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body. While there, Jordan influenced her white male cohorts to pass bills establishing the state’s first minimum wage law, antidiscrimination clauses in business contracts, and the Texas Fair Employment Practices Commission. Jordan served in the Texas Legislature until 1972, and during her tenure, she was the first African-American female to serve as president pro tem of the state senate. In this capacity, she served as acting governor of Texas for one day: June 10, 1972. To this day, Jordan appears to be the only African-American woman to serve as governor of a state. In 1972, Jordan was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first woman elected to represent Texas in the House. In 1974, she galvanized the nation in a televised speech before the House Judiciary Committee supporting the impeachment of President Richard Nixon, stating, “I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution,” concluding that if her fellow committee members did not find the evidence for impeachment compelling enough, “then perhaps the eighteenth–century Constitution should be abandoned to a twentieth–century paper shredder.”2 While Jordan clearly fought for the advancement of the African-American community, she extended her deep commitment to justice for all underrepresented groups. In 1975, she stated, “I am neither a black politician nor a woman politician, just a politician, a professional politician,”3 and demonstrated this universal ethic by encouraging her congressional colleagues to extend the federal protection of civil rights to all Americans. When Congress voted that same year to extend the Voting Rights Act of 1965, for instance, Jordan sponsored legislation that broadened the provisions of the act to include Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. In 1976, Jordan, became the first African-American woman to deliver a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, receiving not only a standing ovation, but one delegate vote (0.03%) for President at the Convention, despite not being a candidate. Jordan retired from politics in 1979 and became an adjunct professor teach-
