Barbara Jordan was the first black woman elected to the Texas state senate and the first black Texan in Congress.
Jordan had been inspired to become an attorney by a talk by Edith Sampson, a black lawyer who gave a talk at Phyllis Wheatley High School, which was segregated. Jordan was a member of the inaugural class at Texas Southern University, a black college that was created just because they refused to integrate the University of Texas. Jordan was a member of the debate team and lead it to national renown, their debate with Harvard ended in a tie. Jordan then attended Boston University Law School where she was one of only two black women to graduate in her class. She passed the bar in both Massachusetts and Texas.
Jordan worked on the John F. Kennedy presidential campaign, she lead a Harris County voter drive that produced an 80-percent turnout. Her interest in politics continued and she ran for the Texas House unsuccessfully twice. In 1966 she won the contest for a newly created Texas State Senate district becoming the first black state senator since 1883 and the first black woman to serve in the senate.
Jordan was elected to congress in 1972, the first woman to represent Texas in the House in her own right, she won 81 percent of the vote. She had the support of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who helped her get appointed to key posts including the House Judiciary Committee. In congress Jordan worked on legislation on topics including: civil rights amendments; women’s rights; supporting the Equal Rights Amendment and co-sponsored a bill that would have granted housewives Social Security benefits based on their domestic labour. Jordan also
sponsored legislation that would extend the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to allow Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans to vote.
In 1974 Jordan gave the 15-minute opening statement of the Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearing for Richard Nixon. Her speech helped lead to Nixon’s resignation over the Watergate scandal. Jordan won national acclaim for her rhetoric, intellect and integrity. Two years later she was asked to deliver the keynote address at the 1976 Democratic National Convention which was yet another first for an black woman.
Jordan retired in 1979 to become a professor at the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. She was an active public speaker and advocate and was awarded with 25 honorary doctorates. Jordan was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1973 and was looked after by her partner Nancy Earl until her death from pneumonia, a complication of leukaemia that she’d kept private.
In 1994 Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honour. On her death she became the first African-American to be buried among the governors, senators and congressmen in the Texas State Cemetery.