Austin, TX

The following is a transcript of KUT’s radio documentary, Rediscovering Barbara Jordan, which originally aired in February, 2006.

WOMAN ANNOUNCER

Major funding for Rediscovering Barbara Jordan comes from Vincent And Elkins, topping the vision and experience of over 700 attorneys across 11 offices, to help build business for companies worldwide. Information at velaw.com.

JACQUI GALES WEBB Say the name Barbara Jordan, and many images come to mind. The unrelenting advocate for the underprivileged, the powerful communicator. The deeply principled lawmaker. In fact, Barbara Jordan served a mere six years as U.S. representative from Texas, but she left a huge mark on the American landscape. In this hour, we’re rediscovering Barbara Jordan. That’s the title of this special report from KUT in Austin. I’m, Jacqui Gales Webb.

JACQUI GALES WEBB (CONTINUED) One of Barbara Jordan’s colleagues had a simple explanation for how she made such an impact during her relatively short tenure in Washington. She opened doors. But it’s not quite that simple, especially considering how many doors were closed to her from the time she was a child growing up in Texas. That’s where producer Wayne Bell begins our story.

WAYNE BELL The rumbling, industrious port city of Houston, Texas. This city was the closest to the state’s vast sugar and cotton plantations when the Emancipation Proclamation was announced in Texas on June 19, 1865. It was here to Houston that most ex-slaves gravitated in huge numbers. They were poor, and were forced to live only in certain areas, or wards of the city. But Houston’s African-American community would become the largest and most developed in the South. A respected voice for many years in that community is Reverend Bill Lawson.

BILL LAWSON My name is Bill Lawson. I’m a Baptist Pastor, and now Pastor Emeritus. When slaves were being released from slavery, uh, they were often housed just west of Downtown. The Fourth Ward. They had little shanty houses. And the Fifth Ward was a little bit north of Downtown, likewise a ghetto. And it was the first place where Blacks would move, who were a little bit above just a servant class, but not quite, uh, middle class, where Blacks trying to climb up lived. Barbie came out of the Fifth Ward.

NARRATOR The Fifth Ward. Barbara Jordan was born in the Fifth Ward in 1936, and would spend her first 20 years in its embrace. Like most Southern ghettos, it was a deprived area, but big enough to be self-contained, insular, a small town within the city.

BARBARA JORDAN What you have to understand is, people were so proud of the Fifth Ward, they used to call it Fifth Ward, Texas.

NARRATOR This is Barbara Jordan from an interview recorded for the Lyndon Banes Johnson Presidential Library in 1983.

BARBARA JORDAN Everybody in that Fifth Ward didn’t have very much. And the beautiful part of it is, when everybody is poor, you don’t ever think about poverty. So, we’d just pay in our gravel streets and eat the dust, uh, which the cars would stir when they would pass, and we didn’t worry about it too much.

NARRATOR It was a close knit community with middle class values on a Fifth Ward budget. In later years, Barbara Jordan’s speeches would often refer to a community. She knew what community felt like. She had lived it in her neighborhood, and in her church.It was a close knit community with middle class values on a Fifth Ward budget. In later years, Barbara Jordan’s speeches would often refer to a community. She knew what community felt like. She had lived it in her neighborhood, and in her church.

MALE ONE She was a member of Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church. And her pastor, Reverend Lucas, was a man who had great political connections. He had the local NAACP, and he was somebody who believed that the church ought to be a place of outreach, that the voice of the church needed to be used to encourage the downtrodden. And much of that had a great deal to do with Barbara’s feeling about her role in life.

BARBARA JORDAN I had to go to church every Sunday when I was growing up. And all day long. And I, I can say it like it was drudgery. But it was important to my family. It remains important to me.

NARRATOR Good Hope was one of the most respected Black churches in Houston. And Ben Jordan, Barbara’s father, one of its most esteemed members, he would later feel called to the ministry himself. He was a strict Baptist. He allowed his daughters no movies, no dancing, and required respectability in all things. And Ben Jordan demanded excellence.

BARBARA JORDAN He taught me to love. To do the best that I could do. That, if you ever set out to do something, and you didn’t just give it everything you had, he just felt that you failed. He would punish by the words he would say and the demeanor you would encounter when you displeased him. So, I, I, I just, uh, was reverent toward him.

NARRATOR Another influence Barbara Jordan would mention often was her fiercely independent Grandpa Patton.

BARBARA JORDAN The good thing about independence and being one’s own person, which I got from my grandfather, the good thing about that is, I was not self-effacing. Now some people may say that that’s bad. But I always figured that if he said that I was to be my own person, that I could just go out there and be it.

NARRATOR This is Wheatley High School. Today it’s about 50% African American. During segregation it was all Black. But popularity favored the lighter-skinned, more petite girls. Barbara Jordan, when she came here, was already five-nine, 175, and very dark. But high school would provide an inspiration.

BARBARA JORDAN This lady named Edith Sampson came to the Phillis Wheatley High School. I was a tenth-grade student. She was introduced as a lawyer, and an alternate representative to the United Nations. A Black woman.

EDITH SAMPSON ...far more important stories I’d like to tell you about what other Negroes have been able to achieve under our Democratic system.

NARRATOR That’s Edith Sampson from a 1949 ABC radio transcription.

EDITH SAMPSON First time I have ever seen a Black woman lawyer. Of course I didn’t know what I was talking about, but after I heard her, I said, well, I’m going to be a lawyer. Since this woman had such a deep voice, and I was so impressed with her. And I did decide that I didn’t want to be same old same old. I want to be somehow a little bit different. Superior, to tell the truth.

NARRATOR The instrument she would use to lift herself above the norm was one she’d already discovered, her naturally strong and clear voice. She sought out public speaking opportunities. She won oratorical contests. She eventually was elected president of the Honors Society, and was named Wheatley’s Girl Of The Year.

NARRATOR (CONTINUED) And in 1952, at age 16, Barbara Jordan graduated from high school with honors. For many Wheatley High graduates, a job, marriage, and folding back into the community of the fifth ward would follow. That was not Barbara Jordan’s destiny. Her next step would have to stretch beyond the cocoon of the Fifth Ward. But she wouldn’t step far. Not yet.

FEMALE Barbara Jordan once said she never intended to be a run-of-the-mill person. She demonstrated her determination for excellence, first in high school, then as a standout in college. Jordan chose a small, Black Southern institution. There she refined a skill for which she’d be famous for the rest of her life. Wayne Bell continues our story.

WAYNE BELL The campus of Texas Southern University. It’s in the heart of the Third Ward, Houston’s predominantly Black middle class area. This small liberal arts college is known for its championship debate team, founded by Dr. Tom Freeman back in 1949, just three years before Barbara Jordan and her friend Otis King arrived here as freshman.

OTIS KING My name is Otis King, and Barbara and I were students together in high school. And we went on to Texas Southern University together, where we, uh, were partners for four years as members of the Texas Southern University Debate Team under the direction of Dr. Thomas Freeman. Dr. Freeman is one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever known. And he’s a preacher. A very fine preacher.

NARRATOR And after 56 years, he’s still preaching and coaching. As profound an influence on today’s students as he was for Barbara Jordan and Otis King in the early-’50s. Dr. Freeman is a revered eccentric around Texas Southern.

THOMAS L. FREEDMAN I don’t call myself doctor. I’m Thomas L. Freedman. (LAUGH) That’s my name. Yes. I have been coach of the University Debate Team for the past 56 years.

INTERVIEWER For an ambitious teenaged orator like Barbara Jordan, it was a stroke of luck that brought her under the tutelage of Tom Freeman.

OTIS KING And I would take her, along with three other boys. And all she would do would be the opening speech. Because she couldn’t think on her feet. But by the end of four years, she was able not just to speak, but to engage in a reputation, just as anybody else.

NARRATOR Dr. Freeman has a very, uh, interesting way of speaking and presenting himself. And we all try to mimic or copy. Barbara probably was the most successful in doing that.

OTIS KING And, Barbara herself said, the one thing I have against Tom Freeman is that he inflicted on me a pattern of speech which I have not been able to eradicate since. (LAUGH) I thought so.

MALE TWO (OVERLAPPING) ...construct a speech in opposition to the topic.

BENJAMIN LEWIS TAYLOR Good evening. My name is Benjamin Lewis Taylor, from Texas Southern University. I…

NARRATOR These are freshman TSU debaters, getting their first tournament experience. It was in bouts like this that Otis King and Barbara Jordan had remarkable success.

OTIS KING One of the highlights of my and Barbara’s participation was an opportunity to integrate the Baylor Debate Tournament. And Barbara just really blew them away in the oratorical portion.

NARRATOR After breaking the color line, they took on more major White Universities around the country, winning most of the time.

OTIS KING The final event for Barbara and me was a debate against a team from Harvard University, something akin to being in the World Series, I guess. And we won the debate. And it just really told us personally that we could leave Texas Southern University and go on to do anything that we wanted to do.

NARRATOR Otis King would go on to earn his law degree at TSU, and eventually become Dean of its Thurgood Marshall School Of Law. Barbara Jordan had a decision to make, as she recalls in this 1979 interview with NBC’s Tom Schneider.

BARBARA JORDAN I thought, I have got to decide whether I have to stay in this very comfortable setting or whether I can venture out to the larger world out there, where White people and thinking people, and I knew that I had to get out of Texas to do that.

NARRATOR Following Dr. Freeman’s advice, in 1956, Barbara Jordan went north to Boston. This is Commonwealth Avenue in the heart of Boston, within a radius of five miles from many of America’s great universities. But only one, Boston University, was known for welcoming deserving black students. Martin Luther King Jr. received his doctorate of philosophy here the year before Barbara Jordan arrived.

BARBARA JORDAN Most of my classmates came from fathers who were lawyers and they talked about spending their summers in the law office and writing briefs, and I didn’t even know what a brief was at this point. But I knew if I worked harder, studied longer than anybody else, I’d survive it, and did.

NARRATOR At the center of Boston University’s campus is a church, Marsh Chapel. There was a preacher here then, a Baptist preacher, Black, and from the South, but unlike any Barbara Jordan had ever heard. His name was Howard Thurmond. He was a mystic, a student of Gandhi, and an important voice behind the civil rights movement.

ANDREW YOUNG I’m Andrew Young. You know, I worked with Martin Luther King as his assistant. And one of the influences that he always quoted and always read was Howard Thurmond. And, later on at Boston University, Howard Thurmond became a similar kind of influence for Barbara Jordan.

NARRATOR In 1959, Barbara Jordan earned her law degree from Boston University.

BARBARA JORDAN I said to my father, I don’t think I’m coming back to Texas, because the air is so free up here. And, I stayed in Boston for I guess, two or three months after graduation and decided, if you are going to make it as a lawyer or as a politician, which was in the back of my mind, you’d better go home, where people know you.

NARRATOR So she returned to Houston and set up a very modest law practice, operating from her parents’ dining room table at first. Wills, probate, divorces, it didn’t hold her attention very long. But politics was in the air. It was 1960, an election year. She presented herself as a volunteer at the Kennedy Johnson Headquarters in Houston, where she met Chris Dixie.

OTIS KING This is Otis King. Chris Dixie was quite an important person in the Harris County Democrats, was kind of the liberal Democratic apparatus. He was a lawyer, a very good lawyer at that, and a person who reached out, sort of across the lands, to encourage people like Barbara to run for office.

NARRATOR He quickly put Barbara Jordan’s eloquence to work on the stump. She was a hit. Chris Dixie had found his future candidate, and Barbara Jordan was now hooked on politics. She became active in school desegregation, as Bill Lawson remembers.

BILL LAWSON Barbara Jordan was part of a group of people who were going to plan a March. She helped with the march. She was not very much, uh, impressed by it. Her feeling was that instead of true desegregation, there was going to be some kind of counterfeit desegregation. And she had warned us about that. Sure enough, we did embarrass the Houston Independent School District into saying that they would desegregate the schools. And then they almost immediately changed what desegregation meant.

NARRATOR Working within the system was more Barbara Jordan’s style. So in ‘62 and ‘64, she ran for the State Legislature, and campaigned for the Democratic Party. She lost both times, but was in position to catch a changing tide in history. In 1966, the courts threw out the unfair Texas electoral scheme and demanded a mid-decade reapportionment. Houston gained three State Senate seats, one of them a possibility for Barbara Jordan, as Otis King recalls.

OTIS KING There was a kind of question of who the Harris County Democrats were going to support. And I recall being at a meeting when Chris spoke up very strongly, and spoke of the party as kind of owing her this seat, as a result of her having participated in elections that she probably could not win, for the sake of pulling out a strong Black vote for the Democratic ticket.

NARRATOR They supported Barbara Jordan, and she won a resounding 64% against a White opponent. History had been made. The powerful Texas Senate was about to have its first black member since Reconstruction.

JACQUI GALES WEBB Barbara Jordan arrived in Austin a political anomaly. She was an African American, she was a woman, and a rookie to boot. But as a politician, she said she would accept only one label, darn good. In a mere six years, she would be a power in the Texas Senate. But it took her only a matter of months to revolutionize the chamber, beginning with the woman’s restroom, the one that didn’t exist the day she arrived. As Wayne Bell tells us, Barbara Jordan quickly bridged the gap between her own background and the state’s powerful White male establishment.

NARRATOR Every two years, this is how it begins.

MALE THREE The Senate of the 79th Legislature of the State of Texas will come to order. NARRATOR The bi-annual session of this center of Texas power politics, the State Senate. This formal ceremony is the swearing in of new senators at the most recent session. On January 10th of 1967, this event carried extra meaning. The crowd in the gallery was jubilant, but on the floor, there were some very worried Senators.

CHARLIE WILSON My name is Charlie Wilson. Barbara and I served identical times in the State Senate. For our swearing in, every African-American of any note from Harris County was there. And the balcony was filled. There wasn’t any room for anybody else, because they had gotten there early and stayed as long as they needed to.

[APPLAUSE]

BEN BARNES Oh yes, they applauded. It was a, it was a day of celebration. I’m Ben Barnes, and the six years that Barbara Jordan served in the Texas Senate, I was either Speaker Of The House, or lieutenant governor. The Texas Senate was a, one of the most conservative legislative bodies in the South. And so, a Black woman coming to the Senate had to create a lot of doubt in the minds of the old Garden Senate. And I’ve got an idea that a lot of them expected the worst.

MARY BETH ROGERS My name is Mary Beth Rogers, and I wrote a biography of Barbara Jordan. Probably a third of the members of that group out there were out and out racist, they wanted nothing to do with any Black person, and here comes this large Black woman, who walks into this all-male club, and within the first 30 days, she has charmed them all. The good old boys ended up loving her, she was voted the outstanding freshman member of the Senate, the press adored her, and she began to emerge as a star in Texas politics.

BEN BARNES She started going to every member of the Senate, particularly those older, more concerting members, and asking for their advice, and asking for their council.

MARY BETH ROGERS The good old boys in the Senate drank bourbon and branch water and so Barbara drank bourbon and branch water. She played the guitar and sang with them. She even went on one of their hunting trips. She made it easy for them to like her.

BEN BARNES There was a political reality underlying the Senate’s acceptance of Barbara Jordan. Texas had changed. It was now a more urban state, and redistricting had forced the Senate to reflect that change. With more urban, liberal-leaning Senators, the old Arch Conservatives no longer had a lock. And with only 31 senators total, every vote counted.

BEN BARNES (CONTINUED) Many a time, the conservatives needed Barbara Jordan’s vote. Sometimes, they got it.

MARY BETH ROGERS I think the important thing to remember about Barbara’s days in the Texas Senate is that Barbara was learning about political power. And she wanted to acquire political power. And she understood who the players were. And she figured out the avenue to political power.

NARRATOR She struck up friendships in high places, notably speaker of the house, Ben Barnes, and power behind the throne, Frank Irwin, a pal of President Lyndon Johnson’s. But getting in with the establishment aroused suspicions among some Liberals, especially Houston’s other Black Legislator.

CURTIS GRAVES My name is Curtis Graves, and I served in the Texas Legislature at the same time that Barbara Jordan did. I guess she chose not to be affiliated with the causes that I was involved in because they were a little too liberal for her politics. She immediately, once she was elected, moved away from the Liberal Wing, and into the Lyndon Johnson John Connelly Wing of the party by doing their bidding in many cases. And, that may have been a wise decision. It eventually got her elected to the Congress of United States.

NARRATOR For the rest of her political career, Barbara Jordan would be dogged by claims that she had sold out. But, her alliances paid off.

BEN BARNES This is Ben Barnes. Well, I talked to President Johnson and told him that Barbara Jordan was a real comer. She probably is a person that can cross party lines, she can make a lot of people that are mad at you about civil rights, she can cause them to say, you know, Johnson was right. This is a woman that we need to help. We need to develop Black leadership.

NARRATOR Lyndon Johnson found ways to get Barbara Jordan national exposure and experience. In 1968 he named her to a Blue Ribbon Panel of economists and executives, to study income maintenance. That worried the president’s assistant for domestic affairs, Joe Califano.

JOE CALIFANO I said, you know, Mr. President, I know you want to do something for this Barbara Jordan, but this Income Maintenance Task Force, this is a pretty heavy subject, this is really complicated. The president interrupted. He said, I want you to know something. This is the brightest person in the state of Texas. This woman is going to be the first Negro governor or the first Negro Senator from the state of Texas. She’s got more common sense, more brains in her pinky than all these guys have from Harvard Business School and from all their corporations in Wall Street. You put her on that Task Force.

JOE CALIFANO (CONTINUED) That was it. Task Force started meeting, and in short order, she started dominating the discussion, pressing these guys with questions, ideas. And they came up with a whole host of proposals, many of which we were able to put into practice.

NARRATOR LBJ helped Barbara Jordan again during redistricting in 1971. At Johnson’s urging, Ben Barnes, now Texas Lieutenant Governor, put her on the Senate committee redrawing Congressional Districts, so that she could draw one of her own in Houston. She did, and then won it handily in the election of 1972. But now, she was about to swim in a much larger pond, with far greater consequences.

JACQUI GALES WEBB Barbara Jordan left behind a very successful state political career. She had been named outstanding freshman in her first Senate term, Governor For A Day in her last. But her political fame peaked when she reached Washington. Her story continues in a moment. You’re listening to Rediscovering Barbara Jordan from KUT Austin and PRI, Public Radio International.

WOMAN ANNOUNCER Major funding for Rediscovering Barbara Jordan comes from Vincent And Elkins, topping the vision and experience of over 700 attorneys across 11 offices, to help build business for companies worldwide. Information at velaw.com.

JACQUI GALES WEBB You’re listening to Rediscovering Barbara Jordan, a special report from KUT Austin and PRI, Public Radio International. I’m Jacqui Gales Webb. After six years at the height of Texas politics, Barbara Jordan arrived in Washington. It was her first term as a U.S. Congress woman, and she was once again compiling a list of firsts.

JACQUI GALES WEBB (CONTINUED) But her tenure in Washington would be marked by what was a defining moment in the country’s history. Within what seemed like moments of her arrival, she was drawn into the national crisis known as Watergate. Wayne Bell begins this next chapter, with Barbara Jordan’s own recollections.

BARBARA JORDAN I went to Congress in January of, of 1973. Now, there were rumblings about impeaching the president, but no serious rumblings. I had always had the highest regard and respect possible for the presidency. And I could not imagine that I would be engaged in a process which would, could lead to the end of the presidency.

WAYNE BELL That’s Barbara Jordan from an interview she recorded with Washington’s WETA in 1984. The rumbling she’s referring to was of course the Watergate scandal, which landed in her lap because she was a member of the House Judiciary Committee. That committee, 21 Democrats and 17 Republicans, was the nation’s point team in determining whether or not to impeach the president. Barbara Jordan, a freshman, brand-new to Washington, would end up playing a crucial role.

MALE THREE Good evening from the U.S. Capital in Washington, where today the House Of Representatives began its formal inquiry into the impeachment of President Nixon.

JOHN DOAR My name is John Doar. I was special counsel for the House Judiciary Committee. In some indication that President Nixon believes that, that that committee can never work, said it would disintegrate into partisan wrangling. And he was counting on that, I believe. And it didn’t come out that way.

JOHN DOAR (CONTINUED) There were, a lot of people had something to do with that. One of them was Barbara Jordan. Barbara Jordan was one of the runners that had steered that thing, kept it on course.

CARL L. BUTLER This is Carl L. Butler. I was a Republican on the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate proceedings. Barbara Jordan was respected by the committee beyond her experience in the House Of Representatives. She was just naturally a person to whom you looked for guidance.

WAYNE BELL The committee and its staff took their time. Three months to gather evidence, 10 weeks to examine it, often behind closed doors. And the nation waited, anxiously.

DAN RATHER This is Dan Rather. The country was at that time, badly split over whether this story of possible, italicized word, possible wrongdoing by the president was getting too much attention.

MALE FOUR There came a point in time when the motion was put on the floor to adopt the Articles Of Impeachment, and that led to committee debate. Each member of the committee was limited to 15 minutes to summarize whatever you wanted to say, beginning with the most senior ones, until we worked our way down to the bottom.

MALE FIVE We have deliberated, we have been fair.

WAYNE BELL Thirty-eight speeches in a row, all televised, on all the major networks.

PAT SCHROEDER This is Pat Schroeder. People don’t understand how tense those times were. These hearings were being watched in practically every school, and barbershops. I mean, America was watching these things daily. It was like, are they really going to impeach this guy who just won every state in the union except one?

WAYNE BELL The long litany concluded with the most junior members on the evening of July 25th. By an interesting coincidence, Barbara Jordan’s speech would be at the peak of television’s prime time.

BUD MYERS This is Bud Myers, Barbara Jordan’s chief of staff when she was in Congress. Barbara’s turn came up right at the time that most Americans were viewing. But it always it seemed to me that fate treated her that way to make sure that she was in the right place at the right time, and she always was well prepared for the circumstances.

BARBARA JORDAN Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the preamble to the Constitution of the United States, we the people. It’s a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the 17th of September in 1787, I was not included in that we the people. I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake.

BARBARA JORDAN (CONTINUED) But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in we the people. Today, I am an inquisitor, and hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole. It is complete, it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.

BOB WOODWARD It was like if God were a woman, that would be the voice. This is Bob Woodward from the Washington Post. What struck me is she said that her faith, and, and when she said faith, it was almost religious. And it, but her Faith was in the Constitution. That was said in a way that just knocked it out of the park. You knew that this was totally sincere, and that history had almost come full circle.

NARRATOR For the rest of her speech, Barbara Jordan alternated between professor of history and civics, explaining impeachment, and prosecuting attorney, measuring the president’s deeds against impeachment criteria. She saved her outrage for the conclusion.

BARBARA JORDAN If the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the United States will not reach the offenses charged here, then perhaps that 18th-century Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th-century paper shredder. Has the president committed offenses, and planned and directed and acquiesced in a course of conduct which the Constitution will not tolerate? That’s the question. We know that. We know the question. We should now forthwith proceed to answer the question. It is reason, and not passion which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision. I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Chairman.

DAN RATHER This is Dan Rather again. What Barbara Jordan did that appearance, she articulated the thoughts of so many Americans. Frankly, when she ended it, there was no doubt in my mind that we have a Senate investigation, and that the president might very well be impeached or have to resign. We’ve got to go on with this. How could we not after what she said?

MALE FIVE I felt goosebumps, I felt pride in the fact that I was employed by Barbara Jordan, but I felt pride in being a Black person, an African-American, at that moment.

NARRATOR Within two weeks, President Nixon would resign. Barbara Jordan, on the other hand, became an instant star. A crowd formed that evening on Capitol Hill to cheer for her as she left. Her office was flooded with telegrams and letters. In Houston, billboards appeared that said, thank you, Barbara Jordan, for explaining our Constitution. Her name became a household word.

BILL CLINTON This is Bill Clinton. After Barbara Jordan’s statement as a member of the Judiciary Committee, her life totally changed, and her position in American history totally changed. She had riveted the contrary, she had impressed everyone, not only with her power and eloquence, but with her absolute conviction. So her life changed. She almost became a national treasure. Wherever she went for the rest of her life, Americans, all kinds of Americans, not just African-Americans, all kinds of Americans, sort of loaded onto her all their hopes and dreams for America, all their feelings about what was best about our country.

NARRATOR Twenty years later, President Bill Clinton would award Barbara Jordan the Presidential medal of freedom, in part for her historic speech. It did change her life, permanently.

JACQUI GALES WEBB Practically overnight, Barbara Jordan’s words had made their way into the national consciousness, destined for the history books. But in the wake of her Watergate stage, after reaching such heights of political celebrity and professional respect, how does one return to the work-a-day routine of every other lawmaker on Capitol Hill? She would struggle with that question. But Jordan’s colleagues weren’t ready to let her fade into the ordinary.

CHARLIE WILSON This is Charlie Wilson. Barbara went from being an extremely respected kind of a Congressperson into being an icon. She was a rock star. That simple. And everybody wanted her approval and everybody wanted her endorsement, and everybody wanted her open support.

NARRATOR This is the United States House Of Representatives in a recent session. When Barbara Jordan returned here full-time after Watergate, she took a seat and stayed put, solidly, listening, letting the issues and the Congressmen come to her, like Charlie Wilson of Texas.

CHARLIE WILSON Oh, everybody would come over. I would usually sit by her, and people would just come by to take a reading on what she thought about this or what she thought about that.

MALE SIX When Barbara Jordan walks across Capitol Hill, a stranger might think she owns the place. He’d be almost right.

NARRATOR Barbara Jordan had become a news item. TV crews from the BBC to Dan Rather and his 60 Minutes team came calling.

DAN RATHER One morning a few weeks ago, when we dropped in to see her, it was a three-ring surface. A Time Magazine photographer was snapping pictures for the cover on Woman Of The Year, a videotape crew was setting up for her monthly commentary on the CBS Morning News. Waiting to come in was a film crew for public broadcasting. The circus was interrupted for a trip to the White House for the signing of the Third Trade Act, a bill she sponsored, that in itself unusual for a very junior member of Congress.

NARRATOR Representative Jordan was in office only three terms, a short time for Congress. Yet she wielded an inordinate amount of influence, and shepherded a number of important bills into law. The Fair Trade Act, the Community Reinvestment Act, the Consumer Protection Measure, and the Voting Rights Act of 1975.

ANDREW YOUNG I’m Andrew Young. The Voting Rights Act was due to expire in 1975. And Barbara took the lead in the Judiciary Committee of extending and also improving the Voting Rights Act.

NARRATOR Her improvement, inclusion of a new class of minorities, based on language.

RODNEY ELLIS My name is Rodney Ellis. I hold a seat in a Texas Senate that Barbara Jordan once represented. One of the most important things and Barbara Jordan’s political career was the 1975 Amendment to the Voting Rights Act. She came up with an added something called the Bilingual Amendment, which added Texas and a number of other places where there was a significant enough Hispanic population. And not only did it help Hispanics, it created opportunities for women and African-Americans and Progressive Anglos as well.

RODNEY ELLIS (CONTINUED) It was an amendment that was as important as the Voting Rights Act itself.

NARRATOR Barbara Jordan considered passage of the Voting Rights Act Of 1975 her greatest political achievement. But the high point of her political career would come a year later in 1976, as a keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention. The conventions of ‘68 and ‘72 had been divisive, mirroring the entire country’s discord over Vietnam and Watergate. For Party Chairman Bob Strauss, this convention had a different problem.

BOB STRAUSS It was a dog convention. I couldn’t get people quiet in the hall, and I was worried that no one was going listen to her because they didn’t listened to John Glen or anybody else, I might add, including me, the chairman of the convention.

NARRATOR This is by far the biggest ovation anyone has received here in this opening session of the Democratic Convention, the first time the Convention has really come alive, on his first night, from Barbara Jordan, Congresswoman from Texas.

BOB STRAUSS And just before she went up on her platform, I said, now Barbara, I bet all my chips on you. And she turned to me and said, Bob, you help me get those bad knees up that stage, and I’ll turn this place around for you.

BARBARA JORDAN Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for a very warm reception.

BOB STRAUSS And when she got to her first sentence, all of a sudden, the audience that quiet and started listening, and I knew I had a successful convention.

BARBARA JORDAN But there is something different about tonight, there is something special about tonight. What is different? What is a special? I, Barbara Jordan, am a keynote speaker.

(APPLAUSE)

NARRATOR She spoke for 20 minutes before a packed house and a vast national audience via television. She mentioned the opposing party only once, not disparagingly. She spoke of national community, the common good, ethical leadership, and personal responsibility. She quoted Jefferson and Lincoln. Her intonation hinted of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy.

BARBARA JORDAN My presence here is one additional bit of evidence that the American dream need not forever be deferred.

(APPLAUSE)

NARRATOR It wasn’t long before a Barbara Jordan For Vice President movements swept the Convention Hall. Republican Senator Barry Goldwater called it the most electrifying speech he’d ever heard. Newspaper headlines the next day were unanimous. Barbara Jordan had become America’s orator. She returned to Congress, but by her third and final term, legislative politics had lost its appeal.

BARBARA JORDAN In Congress, one chips away. One does not make bold strokes. And, after six years, I had wearied of the little chips that I could put on a woodpile.

NARRATOR That’s Barbara Jordan from a 1985 interview with Liz Carpenter. There may have been another reason she left Congress, one she had kept totally secret. Early in her Congressional career, she had been diagnosed with the beginning stages of M.S., Multiple Sclerosis. Lately her walking had become more difficult, and her manor more grim. And in December of 1977, she announced she would leave Congress at the end of the term.

JACQUI GALES WEBB Whether from a need for privacy or a refusal to allow anything to stand in her way, Barbara Jordan never revealed what illness was gradually whittling away at her mobility, leading her first to rely on a cane, then a walker, then a wheelchair. Nothing could diminish the professional triumphs or personal satisfaction she derived from the next phase of her career.

NARRATOR Barbara Jordan relocated here at the University Of Texas At Austin, home to Lyndon Johnson’s Presidential Library and his School Of Public Affairs, a graduate school he created to train future public officials and leaders.

BEN BARNES This is Ben Barnes. Barbara’s decision to come to the LBJ School and to teach did not surprise me at all. She loved Johnson, she wanted to teach, she didn’t know how long she was going to live. By coming to the Johnson School, it was going to give her a forum. It was going to give her a base.

NARRATOR Congresswoman Jordan became Professor Jordan, teacher of ethics. MALE SEVEN …the statute, without then continuing to define the state’s interest.

BARBARA JORDAN How do the rest of you feel about this case? Did the Court do too far? Was this judicial process… NARRATOR She was invigorated by interaction with the students, and never missed a class.

SHANNON STEWART My name is Shannon Stewart, and I was a student of Barbara’s in 1995. The course was an ethics class. And, we were all terrified, (LAUGH) pure terror. You know, the famous voice, the, the history, and she immediately put us at ease. She had a really very good laugh that was infectious, and again, I think it was leavened by her pleasure, or enjoyment of the class, and appreciation for the students.

NARRATOR After settling into her new career at the LBJ School, Barbara Jordan began to respond to the clamor of other requests for her time. She signed up as a member of the Board Of Directors for several corporations, often as the first woman, or the first African-American. The Mead Corporation, the Washington Star Newspaper, Northrop Grumman, and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad are some examples.

MARK SHAPIRO My name is Mark Shapiro, and I was chairman of Texas Commerce Bank for much of the time that Barbara Jordan was on our board. Texas Commerce Bank was one of the most powerful institutions in Texas. We wanted to add Barbara Jordan to the Board for three reasons. We respected her ability, we needed to send a message that we were a bank for all people, and number three, we knew the importance of the Community Reinvestment Act that she had helped author.

NARRATOR Back in 1977, Congresswoman Jordan had sponsored the Community Reinvestment Act, a banking law that forced banks to lend and make services available in minority and low-income neighborhoods, areas that in the past they had ignored. Texas Commerce Bank, the biggest bank in Texas, would be the first to open a branch in the Fifth Ward. Similar branches around the state soon followed.

MALE EIGHT I believe that her most important accomplishment was the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act. The legacy of Barbara Jordan is reflected in hundreds of poor neighborhoods around this country that have been redeveloped and rehabilitated because of that law.

NARRATOR Barbara Jordan’s ability to steer boards of directors towards more ethical actions is one of her quiet legacies. The townships of South Africa provide an example. Joe Califano, former adviser in the Johnson Administration, convinced her to join the board of the Keiser Family Foundation in 1985. One of her first issues, whether or not to divest from corporations doing business in Apartheid South Africa. Almost all of the board members were in favor of pulling out.

MALE NINE And Barbara Jordan said in effect, you’re totally wrong. We should be going into South Africa, and doing something to help the people and the problem. The best project was one to create primary care individuals who could provide vaccinations, heal broken arms, deal with colds and flu’s with very simple training. And that was Barbara Jordan’s idea, and it was an enormously successful project.

NARRATOR In 1993, in part for her work in South Africa, Barbara Jordan received the Nelson Mandela Award For Health And Human Rights. She was honored at home as well. Numerous medals and awards and 31 honorary doctorial degrees from the likes of Princeton, Notre Dame, and Brandeis. In many of those universities, she delivered the commencement address, like this one at Harvard in 1977.

BARBARA JORDAN What the people want is very simple. They want an America as good as its promise. That’s what they want.

NARRATOR Barbara Jordan was most famous as an orator.

BARBARA JORDAN I have close to 300 speeches in my own collection of her speeches, but we believe that there are many more.

NARRATOR Dr. Barbara Holmes is dean of the Memphis Theological Seminary. She’s made a study of the best known of the Jordan legacies, her speeches. Their subjects range widely. A surprising number are religious. Other subjects include the Constitution, Democracy, immigration, civil rights, and ethics.

FEMALE TWO Barbara Jordan in many instances was way ahead of her time. So when I’m talking about Barbara Jordan’s speeches, I’m not talking about a group of dusty archival remnants. I’m talking about living documents that need to be looked at again.

NARRATOR Although her voice and intellect remained powerful, Barbara Jordan’s body was failing. By 1982, her multiple sclerosis had confined her to a wheelchair. In the summer of 1988, she almost drowned in her home swimming pool. And in 1994, she was diagnosed with leukemia. Yet she didn’t slow down. One job she took on was for her friend, the governor of Texas, Anne Richards.

ANNE RICHARDS I have seen Barbara Jordan do a lecture to city employees of Austin on the subject of the higher standards and ethical responsibility to their jobs that will really choke you up. It will wipe away any cynicism you feel about government.

NARRATOR She accepted the specially created, and unpaid position of ethics advisor, which meant that a few times a year, she gave the lecture two new appointees. There was one job however, that did not come her way.

BILL CLINTON This is Bill Clinton. When my first Supreme Court vacancy came up, I very much wanted to appoint a woman jurist. And Barbara Jordan would clearly have been my first choice. But, I knew that the condition of her health was uncertain. So, I had to look elsewhere.

NARRATOR But in spite of her health, President Clinton appointed Barbara Jordan to chair a special commission on immigration reform.

BILL CLINTON I was really kind of surprised she agreed to do it. You know, I knew it was going to be a burden on her from a health point of view. But I also didn’t think there was anybody else in America that would give legitimacy to the work of the commission like she would, and impose rigor on it and be likely to produce a good product, all of which she did.

NARRATOR The Jordan Commission, as it was known, submitted an initial report to the President, which he endorsed wholeheartedly. But leukemia was taking its toll. In December of 1995, Barber Jordan fell ill. What would have been her first day of teaching the new semester, she was rushed to the hospital. She died the next morning.

TOM BROKAW President and Mrs. Clinton were among the many today who expressed their sadness at the news out of Texas. Barbara Jordan, the former congresswoman and memorable political orator died today at the age of 59. She…

NARRATOR Editorials, biographies, and tributes filled the newspapers and airwaves, like this from NBC Nightly News anchor, Tom Brokaw.

TOM BROKAW Barbara Jordan embodied what Americans seek but seldom find in their leaders, wisdom, courage, passion, and moral purpose.

NARRATOR Memorial services were held in Washington and Austin. The funeral service was at her home church in Houston, with the president delivering a eulogy.

BILL CLINTON Through the sheer force of the truth she spoke. The poetry of her words and the power of her voice. Barbara always stirred our national conscience.

NARRATOR Barbara Jordan would achieve one more first, the first African-American buried at the State Cemetery in Austin. Her grave lies a few feet from that of Stephen F. Austin, the father of Texas.

ANDREW YOUNG This is Andrew Young. Barbara Jordan was one with many burdens. Her color, her gender, the fact that she tended to be overweight. She somehow used those burdens as blocks to build a, a character that everybody had to look up to. She was a voice of reason and sanity in confusing times. Even though she was Black, she never spoke as a Black person. She spoke as an American.

ANDREW YOUNG (CONTINUED) She spoke with a Shakespearean flair that related her to the best of Western civilization. And she held high the values of the Bible and the Constitution, both in her life and in her speech, and in her politics, that made her one of the giants of our time.

JACQUI GALES WEBB Rediscovering Barbara Jordan is a production of KUT in Austin, Texas. Our program was produced and reported by Wayne Bell, and edited by Emily Donahue. Special thanks to Mary Beth Rogers, author of Barbara Jordan, American Hero, the Lyndon Banes Johnson Presidential Library And Museum, and the Barbara Jordan Archive at Texas Southern University. Our music was performed by Barry Franklin. I’m Jacqui Gales Webb. Thanks for listening.

WOMAN ANNOUNCER Major funding for Rediscovering Barbara Jordan comes from Vincent And Elkins, topping the vision and experience of over 700 attorneys across 11 offices, to help build business for companies worldwide. Information at velaw.com. Additional support comes from Barbara and Kevin J. Berry, Lidia Agraz, and Time Warner Cable Austin.

MALE 10 PRI, Public Radio International.

— KUT Staff