Barbara jordan spouse
Barbara Jordan: Early Life and Education
Barbara Charline Jordan was born on February 21, , in her parents’ home in Houston. Her father, Benjamin Jordan, was a Baptist minister and warehouse clerk. Her mother Arlyne was a maid, housewife and church teacher.
Did you know?
Texas congresswoman Barbara Jordan's great-grandfather, Edward Patton, was one of several Black representatives who served in the Texas legislature during Reconstruction.
Jordan attended the segregated Phillis Wheatley High School, where a career day speech by Edith Sampson, a Black lawyer, inspired her to become an attorney.
Jordan was a member of the inaugural class at Texas Southern University, a Black college hastily created by the Texas legislature to avoid having to integrate the University of Texas. There Jordan joined the debate team and helped lead it to national renown.
Jordan family tree
House of Representatives. She became nationally known for her speeches during impeachment hearings for President Nixon, and later for her keynote address in the Democratic National Convention. Barbara was born on February 21, in Harris County, Texas. She was the youngest daughter of Benjamin Jordan and Arlyne Patten. In , her family was living in a house owned by her paternal grandfather, Charles Jordan, at Sharon Street in Houston, Texas.The team famously tied Harvard’s debaters when they came to Houston.
Jordan graduated magna cum laude from Texas Southern University in and was accepted at Boston University’s law school. Three years later, Jordan earned her law degree as one of only two African American women in her class. She passed the Massachusetts and Texas bars and returned to Houston to open a law office in the Fifth Ward.
Barbara Jordan: Texas State Senator
Jordan volunteered for John F.
Kennedy’s presidential campaign, heading a Harris County voter drive that yielded an percent turnout. She twice ran unsuccessfully for the Texas House before winning the contest for a newly created Texas State Senate district.
In Austin, she won the respect of her colleagues and worked to pass a state minimum wage law that covered farmworkers.
In her final year in the state senate, Jordan’s colleagues elected her president pro tem, allowing her to serve as governor for a day—June 10, —in accordance with state tradition.
Barbara Jordan: Years in Congress
Five months later Jordan ran for Congress as the Democratic nominee for Houston’s 18th District. She won, becoming the first African American woman from a Southern state to serve in the U.S.
House of Representatives.
Barbara jordan family life Life is not a holiday but an education. One eternal lesson for us all: to teach us how better we should love. Barbara Jordan emerged as an eloquent and powerful interpreter of the Watergate impeachment investigation at a time when many Americans despaired about the Constitution and the country. As one of the first African Americans elected from the Deep South since and the first Black Congresswoman ever from that region, Jordan lent added weight to her message by her very presence on the House Judiciary Committee. Jordan and Arlyne Patten Jordan.With support from her close advisor Lyndon B. Johnson, Jordan was appointed to key posts including on the House Judiciary Committee.
On July 25, , Jordan gave the minute opening statement of the Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearing for Richard Nixon. Her speech was a staunch defense of the U.S. Constitution (which, she noted, had not initially included African Americans in its “We, the people”) and its checks and balances designed to prevent abuse of power.
She said, “I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.”
The impeachment speech helped lead to Nixon’s resignation over the Watergate scandal and won Jordan national acclaim for her rhetoric, intellect and integrity. Two years later she was asked to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention—another first for an African American woman.
While in Congress Jordan worked on legislation promoting women’s rights, supported the Equal Rights Amendment and cosponsored a bill that would have granted housewives Social Security benefits based on their domestic labor.
Barbara Jordan: Retirement, Health Troubles, Final Honors
Jordan retired from Congress in to become a professor at the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.
She became an active public speaker and advocate, amassing 25 honorary doctorates.
Barbara jordan family life story Barbara Charline Jordan February 21, — January 17, was an American lawyer, educator, [ 1 ] and politician. House from the former Confederacy since , alongside Andrew Young of Georgia. Jordan achieved notoriety for delivering a powerful opening statement [ 5 ] at the House Judiciary Committee hearings during the impeachment process against Richard Nixon. In , she became the first African American, and the first woman, to deliver a keynote address at a Democratic National Convention. Commission on Immigration Reform.Her vehement opposition helped derail Ronald Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork (who had opposed many civil rights cases) to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jordan, who had suffered from multiple sclerosis since , was wheelchair-bound by the time she was invited to give her second Democratic convention keynote address in Until her death, she remained private about her illnesses, which finally included diabetes and cancer.
In Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor.
Jordan died of leukemia-related pneumonia on January 17, Breaking barriers even in death, she became the first African American to be buried among the governors, senators and congressmen in the Texas State Cemetery.
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- Barbara C. Jordan
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- January 19,
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- July 6,
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- November 9,
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