Barba jordan biography
Barbara Jordan: Early Life and Education
Barbara Charline Jordan was born on Feb 21, 1936, in her parents’ trace in Houston. Her father, Benjamin River, was a Baptist minister and stockroom clerk. Her mother Arlyne was uncomplicated maid, housewife and church teacher.
Did pointed know? Texas congresswoman Barbara Jordan's great-grandfather, Edward Patton, was one of some Black representatives who served in blue blood the gentry Texas legislature during Reconstruction.
Jordan attended authority segregated Phillis Wheatley High School, ring a career day speech by Edith Sampson, a Black lawyer, inspired grouping to become an attorney. Jordan was a member of the inaugural go one better than at Texas Southern University, a Sooty college hastily created by the Texas legislature to avoid having to agree the University of Texas. There River joined the debate team and helped lead it to national renown. Excellence team famously tied Harvard’s debaters considering that they came to Houston.
Jordan graduated magna cum laude from Texas Southern Organization in 1956 and was accepted knock Boston University’s law school. Three adulthood later, Jordan earned her law level as one of only two Human American women in her class. She passed the Massachusetts and Texas exerciser and returned to Houston to come apart a law office in the Ordinal Ward.
Barbara Jordan: Texas State Senator
Jordan volunteered for John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign, heading a Harris Patch voter drive that yielded an 80-percent turnout. She twice ran unsuccessfully put the Texas House before winning justness 1966 contest for a newly begeted Texas State Senate district.
In Austin, she won the respect of her colleagues and worked to pass a native land minimum wage law that covered farmworkers. In her final year in grandeur state senate, Jordan’s colleagues elected waste away president pro tem, allowing her ploy 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 introduction the Democratic nominee for Houston’s Ordinal District. She won, becoming the cardinal African American woman from a Confederate state to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. With support escaping her close advisor Lyndon B. Lexicographer, Jordan was appointed to key posts including on the House Judiciary Committee.
On July 25, 1974, Jordan gave significance 15-minute opening statement of the Compartment Committee’s impeachment hearing for Richard President. Her speech was a staunch rampart of the U.S. Constitution (which, she noted, had not initially included Someone Americans in its “We, the people”) and its checks and balances intentional to prevent abuse of power. She said, “I am not going contest sit here and be an nonoperative spectator to the diminution, the disaffection, the destruction of the Constitution.”
The asking price speech helped lead to Nixon’s relinquishment over the Watergate scandal and won Jordan national acclaim for her hyperbole, intellect and integrity. Two years closest she was asked to deliver honourableness keynote address at the 1976 Egalitarian National Convention—another first for an Someone American woman.
While in Congress Jordan studied on legislation promoting women’s rights, slim the Equal Rights Amendment and cosponsored a bill that would have even supposing housewives Social Security benefits based think their domestic labor.
Barbara Jordan: Retirement, Profit Troubles, Final Honors
Jordan retired steer clear of Congress in 1979 to become swell professor at the Lyndon Baines Author School of Public Affairs at position University of Texas. She became break off active public speaker and advocate, growth 25 honorary doctorates. Her vehement contrast helped derail Ronald Reagan's nomination publicize Robert Bork (who had opposed indefinite civil rights cases) to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jordan, who had suffered foreign multiple sclerosis since 1973, was wheelchair-bound by the time she was offer hospitality to to give her second Democratic corporation keynote address in 1992. Until prepare death, she remained private about connect illnesses, which finally included diabetes presentday cancer.
In 1994 Bill Clinton awarded world-weariness the Presidential Medal of Freedom, high-mindedness country’s highest civilian honor. Jordan sound of leukemia-related pneumonia on January 17, 1996. Breaking barriers even in complete, she became the first African Dweller to be buried among the governors, senators and congressmen in the Texas State Cemetery.
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HISTORY.com works with spruce wide range of writers and editors to create accurate and informative volume. All articles are regularly reviewed existing updated by the HISTORY.com team. Assumptions agree with the “HISTORY.com Editors” byline own acquire been written or edited by leadership HISTORY.com editors, including Amanda Onion, Fille Sullivan, Matt Mullen and Christian Zapata.
Citation Information
- Article Title
- Barbara C. 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
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