Racialicious Crush Of The Week: Barbara Jordan

By Andrea Plaid

Barbara Jordan. Via fashionmodeldirectory.com

Watching last night’s vice presidential debates, I thought about which woman I’d could easily see shredding Congressman Paul Ryan’s arguments with as much–if not more–aplomb than Vice President Biden. Of the many I thought of, I came up with the late congresswoman Barbara Jordan.

Her ability to shred arguments started in her younger years: she graduate from high school as an honor student in Texas. Inspired by lawyer and the first Black UN delegate Edith Sampson, Jordan aspired to be a lawyer, too: she majored in political science and history at Texas Southern University (the Jim Crow laws prevented her from attending University of Texas at Austin), where she not only graduated magna cum laude in 1956 but also became, during her time there, a champion debater, besting opponents from Yale and Brown. She earned her law degree from Boston University School of Law in 1959 and, after teaching a Tuskegee Institute for a year, went back home to Texas and started a private law practice in Houston. She also served as a get-out-the-vote organizer for the Kennedy-Johnson presidential ticket in 1960.

After two unsuccessful attempts to run for Texas’ House of Representatives, Jordan won a seat in the state’s Senate in 1966; she became the first African American senator since 1883 to win a seat and the first Black woman ever to do so. During her two-term tenure, her Senate colleagues voted her to serve as the state senate’s president pro tempore and as acting state governor for a day on June 10, 1972, while the governor and lieutenant governor left the state. She also helped get the state’s first minimum wage laws passed as well as advocated for creating the Texas Fair Business Practice Commission to eliminate discriminatory business practices. And then-President (and fellow Texan) Lyndon Johnson ran his 1967 message concerning Civil Rights by her.

Then Texans elected Jordan to serve in the US House of Representatives in 1972. Johnson encouraged her to sit on the House’s Ways and Means Committee and Judiciary Committee. According to the research tool Gale:

The 1974 Watergate scandal gave Jordan national prominence. Her speech in favor of President Richard Nixon’s impeachment was nothing short of oratorical brilliance. Her eloquence was considered memorable and thought-provoking. Her expertise as an attorney was demonstrated in 1974 when she spoke about the duty of elected officials to their constituents and the United States Constitution. Despite her personal distaste for an impeachment, Jordan insisted that President Nixon be held accountable for the Watergate fiasco. A Senate investigation, she believed, was warranted. Her televised speech was the center of media attention and critique for days to come.

And this is what she said (the full transcript is here):

Page 1 of 3 | Next page