Historical Public Servants Barbara Jordan

Historical Public Servants

barbara Jordan: a Politician Who inspired unity

“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

Anative 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 –By Anuj Shah 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-

ing ethics at the University of Texas’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. She received countless awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton in 1994. Jordan passed away in 1996, but her incredible legacy and light will burn brightly for a long time to come.

Anuj Shah is the managing principal of Anuj A. Shah, P.C. He is board certified in immigration & nationality law by the Texas Board of Legal

Leon Jaworski led several of the 20th century’s most impressive legal teams, and exemplified the ethical, objective, and patriotic practice of law. He was a legal prodigy, and became the youngest Texas attorney ever admitted at bar.1 In 1929, at 23 years old, he zealously defended a Black man accused of murdering a white couple, despite negative publicity.2 It was a pro bono appointment, yet he exhausted all appeals for his client, who was eventually executed. This was only the first of many stands that Mr. Jaworski would take for the rule of law despite controversy.

During World War II, Mr. Jaworski joined the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps, rose to the rank of Colonel, and became chief trial counsel for prosecuting war criminals.3 The Army awarded him the Legion of Merit award for his efforts.4 However, he declined to participate in the international Nuremburg Trials,5 in part because he did not believe that all of the defendants would receive a fair trial.6

Mr. Jaworski returned to private practice and became managing partner at his firm, which became Fulbright & Jaworski, L.L.P., now Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP.7 He served as president of the Houston Bar Association (1948), the American College of Trial Lawyers (1961–62), the State Bar of Texas (1962–63), and the American Bar Association (1971–72).8

In 1962, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked Mr. Jaworski to prosecute the segregationist governor of Mississippi for criminal contempt of court.9 He accepted the appointment as a public service. As a result, some of Mr. Jaworski’s clients fired his firm out of spite, and he suffered frequent insults and hate mail.10

Mr. Jaworski’s most famous work was his service as the special prosecutor in the Watergate investigation in 1973–74. President Nixon pressured Mr. Jaworski’s predecessor out of office.11 Many public figures and his new staff assumed that Mr. Jaworski was compromised by accepting the appointment. He declined to ask the grand jury to indict the President in the

endnotes

1. Barbara Charline Jordan, Keynote Address at the Democratic National Convention (July 12, 1976), https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barbarajordan1976dnc.html. 2. Rep. Barbara Jordan, Statement on the Articles of Impeachment (July 25, 1974), in WASH. POST, Jan. 7, 1979, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/ magazine/1979/01/07/barbara-jordan-a-self-portrait/413aa701-8a85-4c89-8781-1b02b 0b8eba3/. 3. Barbara Charline Jordan, HISTORY, ART & ARCHIVES: U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTA-

Leon Jaworski: standing up for the rule of Law

TIVES, https://history.house.gov/People/Detail/16031 (last visited Oct. 17, 2020). –By Eric D’Olive Watergate affair because he believed the President could not get a fair trial and that it would not be in the country’s best interest to prosecute the case in court. However, when the President refused to produce certain incriminating tapes in a related matter, Mr. Jaworski successfully appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to have the tapes produced.12 President Nixon resigned soon afterward.

Beyond being a brilliant example of the Houston legal community on the national and international stage, Mr. Jaworski served Houston directly in many other ways. He was a trustee of the M.D. Anderson Foundation, a board member of the Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Medical Center, the president of the Houston Chamber of Commerce, a director of several local companies, and an advocate for the construction of the Astrodome.13

Eric D’Olive is a member of the Houston Bar Association Historical Committee and is general counsel for Mambo Seafood® Restaurants. He is an avid outdoorsman and loves to share his love of nature with his friends and family, especially with his wife Kami and their wonderful children.

endnotes

1. Anne Dingus, Leon Jaworski, TEX. MONTHLY, Feb. 1999, https://www.texasmonthly. com/articles/leon-jaworski/. 2. See Scott v. State, 114 Tex. Crim. 631, 26 S.W.2d (1930); Harry Hurt, III, Have Conscience,

Will Travel, TEX. MONTHLY, Nov. 1977, https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/haveconscience-will-travel/ (noting how Mr. Jaworski first made a name for himself as a courtappointed public defender in the highly publicized Jordan Scott murder case). 3. Gina Spada, Leon Jaworski, 46 TEX. B.J. 192, 193 (Feb. 1983). 4. Hurt, supra note 2. 5. A young Jaworski had led the prosecution against personnel of the Hadamar Euthanasia

Center for the murder of 476 Soviet and Polish laborers in a legal proceeding considered to be the predecessor of the infamous Nuremburg Trials. The Hadamar Trial, U.S. HO-

LOCAUST MEM’L MUSEUM, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/thehadamar-trial (last visited Oct. 19, 2020). 6. Hurt, supra note 2. His reasons included, according to Hurt, that his father was gravely ill, that his “disliked the judicial hodgepodge of French, Russian, and U.S. law,” and that the “trials involved too many purely military offenses.” Id. 7. Firm History, NORTON ROSE FULBRIGHT, http://www.fulbright.com/fjlib/media/flash/ history/index.cfm (last visited Oct. 19, 2020). 8. Newton Gresham & James A. Tinsley, Jaworski, Leon, TEX. STATE HISTORICAL ASS’N, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/jaworski-leon (last visited Oct. 19, 2020). 9. Hurt, supra note 2. 10. Robert Draper, Colonel of Truth, TEX. MONTHLY, Nov. 1, 2003, https://www.texas monthly.com/articles/colonel-of-truth/amp/. 11. Id. 12. Id.; Linda Charlton, Leon Jaworski, 77, Dies in Texas; Special Prosecutor for Watergate, N.Y.

TIMES, Dec. 10, 1982, at A1, https://www.nytimes.com/1982/12/10/obituaries/leonjaworski-77-dies-in-texas-special-prosecutor-for-watergate.html. 13. Gresham & Tinsley, supra note 8.

hon. Gaynelle Griffin Jones: Determined and brilliant –By Hon. Vanessa Gilmore

When you live a life of Gaynelle to try to make her run successful. I had a fundraiser for service, honor, and dis- her, and I took her to meet a number of people that I thought could tinction, then you will help her. Ultimately, her run was unsuccessful, but her grace, deprobably leave a legacy that termination, and perseverance got the attention of President Clinmany will want to remember. ton, who appointed her to serve as the U.S. Attorney for the SouthGaynelle Griffin Jones was such ern District of Texas. As a result, she was serving as U.S. Attorney a person. I first met Gaynelle at the time I became a federal judge in 1994. Jones in 1992. Although we had Ironically, as I was going through the confirmation process, I both practiced law for many had many interviews in Washington to assess my qualifications years by that point, our paths and my temperament to serve as a federal judge. I was told that had never crossed because I when inquiry was made about my temperament, the story that was a civil litigator and she was people told again and again was about how when I didn’t get the a prosecutor with the United seat on the Court of Appeals, I helped another woman who was States Attorney’s office. That year, Governor Ann Richards nomi- appointed. I was surprised that others were surprised by that. I nated me to a seat on the First Court of Appeals. As I began the think it speaks to the way women work to support each other. But confirmation process, I learned that two state senators were hav- it was also because a lot of them hadn’t had the pleasure of knowing a power struggle about who should be able to nominate some- ing Gaynelle Griffin Jones. Her quiet and determined demeanor one for that seat. Although this fight had nothing to do with me, and her obvious brilliance and qualification for the job would my nomination was not to be fulfilled. Governor Richards then have motivated anybody to want to help her succeed. asked me if I could recommend another African-American wom- In the years that followed, I got to know Gaynelle better because an to be nominated. After speaking to several people, Gaynelle we were both members of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, where Griffin Jones’s name came up. The governor nominated her for we mentored young girls and where she served as a deaconess. the seat. Later, she struggled through her cancer with the same quiet de-

After Gaynelle was confirmed, she had to run for re-election. termination. She was a remarkable legal legend in Houston. Because she was a career prosecutor and bound by the Hatch Act, she had not been politically active. I, on the other hand, had spent When Judge Vanessa Diane Gilmore was sworn in as a federal years representing the Democratic Party of Houston in election judge in 1994, she was then the youngest sitting federal judge in the matters and had been involved in statewide political issues in nation. She was the first graduate of the University of Houston Law Governor Richards’s administration. I decided that I owed it to Center to be appointed to the federal bench.

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