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Barbara Jordan - Teacher, Patriot, Champion

A Public Life - Her Biography

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She was born in Houston and died a little more than 185 miles away in Austin, but Barbara Charline Jordan managed to influence an entire nation during her nearly 60 years of crossing racial, social and political barriers.

Jordan was born on February 21, 1936, in Houston's historic Fifth Ward to Benjamin and Arlyne Jordan. The youngest of three daughters, she grew up in the ward's public schools and busy churches. She graduated from the all-black Phillis Wheatley High School as a member of the top five percent of the class of 1952. While at Wheatley, Jordan was a member of the honor society and the debate team, where she would first display a captivating oratory style that would eventually come to be recognized as uniquely Barbara Jordan.

With the help of her father, who worked as a warehouse clerk and part-time preacher, Jordan went from Wheatley High School to Texas Southern University. There, she sharpened her mastery of the spoken word as a national champion debater. After graduating magna cum laude in 1956 with a double major in political science and history, she went on to Boston University and earned a law degree in 1959. That same year, she passed the bar exams in both Massachusetts and Texas.

Following a year of teaching at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Jordan returned home to the Houston's Fifth Ward, and started her own law firm in her parent's home. She eventually saved enough money to open her own office three years later.

Like many African-Americans in 1960, Jordan believed in the hope being offered to her generation by a young senator from the state of Massachusetts who was seeking the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency. Calling himself "A New Leader for the 1960s," John F. Kennedy supported the budding Civil Rights Movement and Jordan decided to volunteer in registering black voters for the 1960 presidential election. In her self-effacing manner, Jordan was fond of remembering that her political career began as a "stamper and addresser" of envelopes for the Kennedy campaign until, by simple fate, that rich voice would change the direction of her life.

Jordan recalled that with a law degree, but no real practice, she went down to the Harris (Texas) County Democratic Headquarters and asked how she could assist. She was put to work licking stamps and addressing envelopes. During a scheduled voter registration rally at a local church, the evening's featured speaker failed to show up. Jordan volunteered to speak in the woman's place and her stamp-licking days quickly came to close as her real talent became apparent, a talent she inherited from her mother and father, both of whom valued the art of communication.

Jordan would not be so convincing at the polls during her first two campaigns for public office, running unsuccessfully twice for the Texas State Senate in the 1960s. In 1965, she was named the administrative assistant to the county judge of Harris County. The appointment might have been but a little known footnote in her life, except for the fact that the hiring would make her the first African-American woman to hold the position, one of many firsts Jordan would celebrate in her life.

The roots of Jordan's political life took firm hold in 1966 when she won a seat in the state senate, becoming the first black member of that body since 1883. Jordan served as a tireless champion of minimum wage and voter registration laws. She was the first freshman senator ever named to the Texas Legislative Council and later chaired the Labor and Management Relations Committee. In 1972, she was unanimously elected president pro tempore of the Senate and, under Texas tradition, served as "Governor for a Day," becoming the first black woman to act as the chief executive of any state in the country.

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Images courtesy of the Barbara Jordan Archives, Robert J. Terry Library, Texas Southern University