Barbara Jordan Years in Us House of Representatives
Barbara Jordan
This story is part of a #30DayWritingChallenge chronicling the historic names of Austin. Read this for more context .
Two years ago today, I left New York City, my dwelling of viii+ years, and landed in Austin, via the Barbara Hashemite kingdom of jordan terminal at the Austin International Drome. It'southward a neat twenty-four hour period to tell the tale of this phenomenal woman.
Barbara Jordan was a woman of firsts:
- The beginning black American to be elected to the Texas Senate since Reconstruction
- The first black adult female to exist elected to the Texas Senate
- The first blackness Texan elected to Congress
- The first black woman to deliver a keynote accost to the DNC National Convention
Jordan's wikipedia entry also indicates that her domestic partner, from the tardily 1960s to her death, was a person named Nancy Earl. ❤
Even before her pioneering work in politics, Hashemite kingdom of jordan led a storied and pregnant life. Born in a poor black neighborhood in Houston to parents active in the church, Jordan attended segregated pubic schools and went on to join the countdown class of Texas Southern University. TSU was a college hastily created past the Texas legislature to prevent the University of Texas from having to integrate.
At TSU, Hashemite kingdom of jordan joined the debate team and helped lead it to national renown. The TSU debate team concluded upwards tying Harvard'due south team when they came through Houston, which was a pretty big deal.
Later on graduating from TSU magna cum laude, Jordan went on to attend police school at Boston Academy, where she was one of but two black women in her class. After graduating, she passed both the Massachusetts and Texas bar exams, because she's a badass, and opened a practise in the 5th ward in Houston.
In 1960, while working on JFK's ballot campaign, Jordan led a become-out-the-vote endeavour in Houston's 40 blackness precincts. Her try yielded an fourscore per centum turnout. Post-obit her work on the campaign, Jordan ran unsuccessfully for the Texas House twice before being elected to the Texas Senate in 1966. From the U.S. Firm of Representatives archives:
The other 30 (male, white) senators received her coolly, but Jordan won them over every bit an effective legislator who pushed through bills establishing the state's offset minimum wage law, antidiscrimination clauses in business organization contracts, and the Texas Off-white Employment Practices Commission.
In 1972, Jordan ran for and was elected to to the U.Southward. House of Representatives, representing Houston's 18th district (downtown Houston). Hashemite kingdom of jordan was shut to LBJ, at that time a former president, who served as an advisor to her. That relationship helped gain her appointment to fundamental posts, including on the House Judiciary Committee.
The House Judiciary Committee. 1974. Judge who was president and so?
In a staunch defense of the U.S. Constitution, Jordan delivered a fifteen-minute opening statement during the Judiciary Committee Hearing of President Nixon. Her speech is thought to exist one of the all-time speeches of the 20th century. At the fourth dimension, Jordan was a freshman member of the Judiciary Committee.
Jordan's impeachment speech helped atomic number 82 to Nixon's resignation and won her national recognition. She was applauded for her rhetoric, intellect and integrity. In 1976, two years post-obit the hearing, Jordan was invited to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.
Equally a Congresswoman, Jordan was a champion of women'due south rights. She supported the Equal Rights Amendment and cosponsored legislation that would have granted stay-at-home mothers and wives Social Security benefits based on their domestic labor. She too co-sponsored bills to help the elderly, children, the environment, teachers and the homeless.
At the same time, Jordan was primarily attuned to local issues, sometimes to the chagrin of civil rights and women'due south rights activists. She likewise "made the conscious decision to pursue ability within the established system."
Jordan retired from Congress in 1979 and became a professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT Austin. She amassed 25 honorary doctorates and her opposition helped derail the Bork Supreme Court nomination. She continued to lecture publicly, speaking at the DNC again in 1988 and 1992, by which fourth dimension she was confined to a wheelchair, the result of a long-fought boxing against MS.
Bill Clinton has stated he wanted to nominate Jordan to the Supreme Court, but sadly Jordan'due south health problems prevented him from doing and then. Jordan was diagnosed with MS in 1973 and likewise suffered from diabetes and cancer. She died from pneumonia, a complication of leukemia, in Austin on January 17, 1997, at the age of 59.
While Jordan never explicitly made public comments virtually her sexual orientation, she was with her partner Nancy Earl for over 20 years. Jordan and Earl met during a camping trip in the late 1960s. In 1988, Earl revived Hashemite kingdom of jordan later on she nearly drowned in her pool during physical therapy.
Jordan is cached in the State Cemetery in Austin. She is the showtime black American to be buried there.
Source: https://medium.com/@AllisonRizz/barbara-jordan-93864524111a
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