Posts published in “African-American Firsts”

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

Barbara Jordan was born in 1936 in Houston, Texas to a teacher mother and Baptist preacher father. Jordan grew up to become the first African-American woman voted into the Texas Senate (1966-1972) and the first Black woman from the South elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (1972-1979).

Jordan is best known for her superlative oratory skills, in particular the U.S. Judiciary Committee speech she gave in Congress almost 46 years ago to the day supporting the impeachment of Richard Nixon, as well as the Keynote address she gave at the 1976 Democratic National Convention (the first Black woman to do so in the Convention’s 144-year history).

Jordan also was the first and (so far) only Black woman to serve as Governor (albeit for one day on June 10, 1972) of any state in America. While in Congress, Jordan supported the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, legislation that required banks to lend and make services available to underserved poor and minority communities.

She also supported the renewal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and expansion of it to cover “language minorities”; this expansion offered protection to Spanish-speaking Latinos in her home state of Texas even when opposed by the Texas Governor and Secretary of State. Jordan also authored an act that ended federal authorization of price fixing by manufacturers.

After retiring from politics in 1979, Jordan worked as a professor of Ethics at the University of Texas at Austin. Around this time, Jordan was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and eventually had to get around via wheelchair, but that did not stop her from being an active scholar and public servant.

From 1994 until her death in 1996, Jordan chaired the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, which recommended limits on immigration while also acknowledging how immigration had strengthened and continued to strengthen America.

President Bill Clinton wanted to nominate Jordan to the U.S. Supreme Court, but her health issues (which soon also included leukemia) prevented him from nominating her.

I started reading up on Barbara Jordan a few years ago because I’d always heard about her “firsts” but didn’t really didn’t have a sense of who she was or what made her formidable.

Then I listened to and watched her speeches. My. Heavens. If you haven’t heard it before, you MUST HEAR HER VOICE.