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Barbara Jordan - Teacher, Patriot, Champion

Her Words - Important Speeches and Quotes

Gifted with a resonant, yet eloquent voice, punctuated with precise diction when she spoke, Barbara Jordan seemed not only to be speaking to the moment, but to the ages as well. With an economy of words and an ability to turn emotions into sentences, Jordan delivered some of the 20th century’s most defining words.

Early in her political career, she showed the ability to frame with words the important issues of the day. As a young “stamper and addresser,” as she would describe her early experiences in the political campaign of John F. Kennedy, Jordan had the chance to address a voter registration gathering when the scheduled speaker failed to show. The next day, as she remembers, Jordan was no longer stamping and addressing envelopes.

Jordan’s ability to capture a nation with her words may have best been on display during the Impeachment Hearings on President Richard Nixon. Addressing the House Judiciary Committee in 1974, Jordan defended the proceedings and proclaimed her belief in their Constitutional necessity.

“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,” she asserted. (See Video Clip)

In part because of the composure she showed during the dark hours of the Watergate Hearings, Jordan was asked two years later to deliver the keynote address at the 1976 Democratic National Convention in New York, becoming the first African-American woman to address such a convention. Facing a nation still trying to recover from the wounds of Watergate, a crumbling economy and social unrest, Jordan urged Democrats, and the nation as a whole, to avoid further fracturing the national psyche.

“Many fear the future, many are distrustful of their leaders, and fear their voices are never heard. Many seek only to satisfy their private work wants, to satisfy private interests. But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual, each seeking to satisfy private wants. If that happens, who then will speak for America?Who then will speak for the common good?” she asked. (See Video Clip)

Jordan returned to the national stage 16 years later. In the same city where she first addressed the Democratic Party, she again was asked to speak to the party’s national convention in 1992. After struggling to win national elections throughout the 1980s, Jordan told her fellow Democrats that their party was changing, but that it would be stronger because of that change.

“It will change in order to faithfully serve the present and the future, but it will not die,” she noted.

Jordan returned to the national stage 16 years later. In the same city where she first addressed the Democratic Party, she again was asked to speak to the party's national convention in 1992. After struggling to win national elections throughout the 1980s, Jordan told her fellow Democrats that their party was changing, but that it would be stronger because of that change.

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