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Barbara Jordan - Teacher, Patriot, Champion

A Public Life - Her Biography (continued)

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In November of 1972, Jordan was elected to the United States House of Representatives from the Eighteenth Texas District, becoming the first black woman from a Southern state to serve in Congress. She joined Andrew Young of Georgia as the first two African Americans to be elected to Congress from the South in the 20th century.

With her clear and resonant voice and precise diction, Jordan quickly became known as an effective public speaker. Those talents would be on view for the nation to see during the 1974 Watergate hearings when Jordan, then a member of the House Judiciary Committee, delivered an impassioned defense of the proceedings against President Richard Nixon.

"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution," Jordan insisted in what would become one of the pivotal addresses during the hearings.

Impressed with her firm but eloquent voice, the Democratic Party asked Jordan to deliver the keynote address during the 1976 Democratic National Convention in New York, making her the first woman to do so. Speaking to a beleaguered party and nation, Jordan stressed the need for national unity, equality, accountability on behalf of leaders and an America that once again embraced its founding ideals.

"We must address and master the future together. It can be done if we restore the belief that we share a sense of national community, that we share a common national endeavor," Jordan said. Jordan's remarks would be remembered as the highlight of the convention and further secure her position as a national leader as well as aiding Jimmy Carter's push to the White House.

In 1979, after three terms in Congress, Jordan retired from politics and returned to the state she loved, accepting the Lyndon Baines Johnson Public Service Professorship at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Teaching courses on intergovernmental relations, political values and ethics, and already considered a national treasure, Jordan quickly become known as an extraordinary teacher, a title she valued perhaps as much as any she held during her life. According to many of her students, Jordan always carried a copy of the Constitution in her purse and never failed to stress its relevance more than 200 years after its adoption.

Jordan also served as ethics advisor to former Texas Governor Ann Richards in the early 1990s. In 1992, she delivered her second keynote address to a Democratic National Convention, and in 1994 she served as chairwoman of the United States Commission on Immigration Reform.

For her dedication to public service, Jordan was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1990, and in 1994 President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian award. Jordan was also awarded 31 honorary doctoral degrees, including degrees from Tuskegee, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Notre Dame.

Suffering from a number of ailments, including a form of multiple sclerosis, Jordan would be confined to a wheelchair in her later years. On January 17, 1996, in Austin, she would succumb to pneumonia and leukemia.

Jordan's death produced a nationwide outpouring of emotion and remembrance. On January 19, a march was held on the UT-Austin campus from the University Tower to the LBJ Library, where Jordan's body lay in state for 24 hours.

In his eulogy of Jordan during a memorial on the Austin campus, journalist Bill Moyers, a friend of Jordan's, reminded those gathered that Jordan "heard the voice of the people, and she gave the people a voice." Jordan is buried in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin. She was the first African-American buried in the state cemetery.

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