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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Barbara Jordan
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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Barbara Jordan
8:43 PM 1/20/1996 The White House `She trotted her horse, made a path wide, deep'
By NANCY MATHIS
Copyright 1996 Houston Chronicle
President Clinton's words were Barbara Jordan's words, repeated, recounted and revered, praised for the power and eloquence of the woman and her ideas.
"When Barbara Jordan talked, we listened," Clinton told the mourners at her funeral here Saturday.
"We listened in 1974 when she said of the preamble of the Constitution, `We the people is a very eloquent beginning, but when the document was completed on the 17th of September in 1787, I was not included in that we the people,' " the president said, deepening his voice to imitate Jordan.
On a sad day to mark the passing of an old friend, Clinton interrupted work on his State of the Union speech to lead a delegation of Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress and other dignitaries aboard Air Force One to Houston.
Among those joining Clinton were Attorney General Janet Reno, Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros and Education Secretary Richard Riley, as well as former ambassador Andrew Young and Democratic adviser Vernon Jordan.
Clinton thought highly of Barbara Jordan, naming her in 1992 as a keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention and making her chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform.
In 1994, he awarded her a Presidential Medal of Freedom , the nation's highest honor for a civilian.
The medal was draped across her body during the funeral and removed only as the casket was closed and the American flag drawn across the coffin.
Clinton recalled Jordan's words in 1976, when she became the first black woman to give a keynote address at the Democratic Convention "when she asked and answered one of those great questions with which we still struggle. She said, `Are we to be one people bound together by a common spirit, sharing a common endeavor, or will we become a divided nation? A spirit of harmony will survive in America,' she said, `only if each of us remember that we share a common destiny.'
"Barbara Jordan's life was a monument to the three great threads that run throughout the fabric of American history. Our love of liberty, a belief in progress and our search for common ground," Clinton said.
"Whenever she stood to speak she jolted the nation's attention with her artful and articulate defense of the Constitution and the American Dream and the common heritage and destiny we share whether we like it or not."
Jordan, he said, reveled in the nation's struggle to live up to its ideals.
"She once said this: `All we're trying to do is make this government of the United States honest. We only ask that when we stand up and talk about one nation under God with liberty and justice for all, we want to be able to look up at the flag, put our right hand over our hearts, repeat those words and know that they are true.' Well, if Barbara wasn't in the Constitution when it was first written she made sure that once she got in she stayed in, "Clinton said, drawing applause.
Clinton said awarding Jordan the Presidential Medal of Freedom was one of the most enjoyable moments of his presidency.
"Barbara Jordan made every one of us stand a little straighter, speak a little clearer and be a little stronger," Clinton said.
He said she took to heart the words of her grandfather to " `just trot your own horse and don't get in the same rut as everyone else.' She sure trotted her own horse and she made her own path wide and deep."
"Barbara, we the people, will miss you."
JORDAN, BARBARA CHARLINE (1936-1996)
Barbara Jordan, politician and educator, was born in Houston, Texas, on February 21, 1936, the youngest of three daughters of Benjamin and Arlyne (Patten) Jordan. She grew up in the Fourth Ward of Houston and attended public schools. Her father, a warehouse clerk and Baptist minister, assisted her in attending Texas Southern University, where she graduated magna cum laude in 1956. She received a law degree from Boston University in 1959 and passed bar exams in Massachusetts and Texas the same year. After teaching at Tuskegee Institute for a year, Jordan returned to Houston in 1960. She opened a law practice and worked from her parents' home for three years until she saved enough to open an office. She became involved in politics by registering black voters for the 1960 presidential campaign, and twice ran unsuccessfully for the state Senate in the early 1960s. In 1967 redistricting and increased registration of black voters secured her a seat in the Texas Senate, where she was the first black state senator since 1883. Her career was endorsed and facilitated by Lyndon Baines Johnson. Eschewing a confrontational approach, Jordan quickly developed a reputation as a master of detail and as an effective pragmatist and gained the respect of her thirty white male colleagues. While in the legislature she worked for minimum-wage laws and voter registration and chaired the Labor and Management Relations Committee. In 1972 she was unanimously elected president pro tempore of the Senate.
The following year Jordan successfully ran for the United States House of Representatives from the Eighteenth Texas District. She was the first black woman from a Southern state to serve in Congress, and, with Andrew Young, was the first of two African Americans to be elected to Congress from the South in the twentieth century. With her precise diction and booming voice, Jordan was an extremely effective public speaker. She gained national prominence for her role in the 1974 Watergate hearings as a member of the House Judiciary Committee when she delivered what many considered to be the best speech of the hearings. In that speech she asserted, "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." Impressed with her eloquence and stature in the party, the Democratic party chose her to deliver the keynote address at the 1976 Democratic national convention; she was the first woman to do so. Her speech, which addressed the themes of unity, equality, accountability, and American ideals, was considered by many to be the highlight of the convention, and helped rally support for James E. Carter's presidential campaign. In 1979, after three terms in congress, Jordan retired from politics to accept the Lyndon Baines Johnson Public Service Professorship at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin. She taught courses on intergovernmental relations, political values, and ethics. She published her autobiography, Barbara Jordan: A Self Portrait, in 1979. She served as ethics advisor to Governor Ann Richards in the early 1990s. In 1992 she once again delivered the keynote address at the Democratic national convention. She served as chairwoman of the United States Commission on Immigration Reform in 1994.
Among her many honors were induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1990 and a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994. She suffered from a number of ailments in her later years, including a form of multiple sclerosis, and was confined to a wheelchair. She survived a near-drowning incident at her home in 1988, but succumbed to pneumonia and leukemia in Austin on January 17, 1996. Barbara Jordan is buried in the State Cemetery in Austin. Her papers are housed at the Barbara Jordan Archives at Texas Southern University.
Barbara Jordan: "Who Then Will Speak for the Common Good?"
1976 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address
By Thompson H.C.R. No. 90 75R6135 JTR-D HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 1-1
WHEREAS, Texans, and indeed individuals around the world, were greatly saddened by the passing of the Honorable Barbara Charline Jordan on January 17, 1996, and we join her family and many friends in mourning the death of one of the most notable American political figures of the century; and
WHEREAS, Her achievement of a remarkable series of historic firsts assures Barbara Jordan a place in history, but her true legacy cannot be fully conveyed by her long list of accomplishments; her life and career remain touchstones for those who struggle against injustice and discrimination, and her profound commitment to the democratic process shaped the way in which millions of Americans perceive their government; and
WHEREAS, Born February 21, 1936, to B. M. and Arlyne Jordan, Barbara Jordan grew up in Houston's Fifth Ward; in 1947 Mr. Jordan became a Baptist minister, and the young Barbara spent many hours in Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church, listening intently to her father's sermons and to the gospel music that she cherished throughout her life; and
WHEREAS, The Jordans instilled in their daughters their own high standards of conduct and achievement, and Barbara's obvious intellectual gifts and self-possession were sharpened and strengthened by the discipline demanded of her; she excelled at academics and at debate, and by her sophomore year in high school had decided to become a lawyer; and
WHEREAS, The pursuit of her goal led her from Texas Southern University, where she graduated with high honors, to Boston University School of Law, where she was the only woman in a class of 128, and upon receiving her law degree she returned to Houston and established her law practice; and
WHEREAS, Having made up her mind to seek elective office, she twice ran unsuccessfully for state representative before winning a seat in the Texas Senate in 1966, becoming the first African American woman to do so; she quickly established herself as one of that body's ablest members, and after a brief but brilliant career in the legislature made political history once again in 1972 by becoming the first African-American to be elected to the United States Congress from the State of Texas; and
WHEREAS, She first achieved national prominence on July 25, 1974, when the House Judiciary Committee opened impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon, and the country watched spellbound as the young congresswoman from Texas delivered her opening statement; her ringing affirmation of belief in the United States Constitution, a document that when written would have excluded her from its protections, reawakened hope and patriotic feeling in millions of Americans whose faith in their government had been severely shaken; and
WHEREAS, Her permanent presence in the national consciousness was reconfirmed in 1976, when she delivered a keynote address at the Democratic Party's national convention, and the high regard in which she was held by constituents and colleagues alike continued unabated throughout her life; among many other appointments, she served as special counsel for ethics under former Texas Governor Ann W. Richards, chaired the United States Commission on Immigration Reform, and was appointed by United Nations Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to a United Nations panel on the effects of corporate investment on apartheid in South Africa; and
WHEREAS, Upon retiring from Congress in January of 1979, she joined the faculty of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin, where she taught until the end of her life; one of the school's most popular professors, she was also a loyal and vocal supporter of her beloved 3-11 Lady Longhorns basketball team and was a familiar courtside presence at home games; and
WHEREAS, Barbara Jordan's impact on the nation's history is apparent from the distinctions accorded her during her lifetime; inducted into both the National Women's Hall of Fame and the African American Hall of Fame, she was also named one of the 20th century's most influential American women, and in 1994 President Bill Clinton presented her with the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom , for her distinguished advocacy of civil rights and governmental ethics; and
WHEREAS, Far from diminishing in importance, Barbara Jordan's formidable legacy continues to challenge and inspire us in our own lives, and whenever we battle the twin poisons of racism and sexism, whenever we give deeply of ourselves to help those less fortunate, whenever we struggle to do what is right rather than what is easy, Barbara Jordan's indomitable spirit and profound influence are once again felt; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That the 75th Legislature of the State of Texas, Regular Session, 1997, hereby pay tribute to the memory of the Honorable Barbara C. Jordan and extend sincere sympathy to the members of her family: to her mother, Arlyne Jordan; to her sisters, Bennie Creswell and Rose Mary McGowan; and to all the relatives, friends, colleagues, and many admirers of this distinguished American; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That an official copy of this resolution be prepared for the members of her family and that when the Texas House of Representatives and Senate adjourn this day, they do so in memory of the Honorable Barbara C. Jordan.
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AT FUNERAL SERVICE FOR FORMER CONGRESSWOMAN BARBARA JORDAN The Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church Houston, Texas
10:36 A.M. CST
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Pastor Cofield; to Bennie and Rosemary and John; and Aunt and Uncle, Mamie and Wilmer Lee; Mr. Mayor, my good friend Governor Richards; to all the distinguished Texans who are here; and friends of Barbara Jordan around the country; members of Congress; members of the Texas state government; the former members of Congress who served with Barbara who came down with me today; to members of the Cabinet; my fellow Americans.
The last time I saw Barbara Jordan was late last fall when Liz Carpenter talked me into going to the University of Texas to give a speech on race relations on the day of the Million Man March. I was nervous enough as it was. (Laughter.) And I walked out into that vast arena, and there were 17,000 people there. But I could only see one -- Barbara Jordan, smiling at me. And there I was about to give a speech to her about race and the Constitution. (Laughter and applause.) I think it was the nearest experience on this earth to the pastor's giving a sermon with God in the audience. (Laughter.)
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. She did it as a legislator, a member of Congress, a teacher, a citizen.
Perhaps more than anything else in the last few years, for those of us who had the privilege of being around her, she did it in the incredible grace and good humor and dignity with which she bore her physical misfortunes. No matter what, there was always the dignity. When Barbara Jordan talked, we listened.
We listened in 1974 when she said of the preamble to our Constitution: "We the people. It is a very eloquent beginning, but when the document was completed on the 17th of September in 1787, I was not included in that 'we the people'."
We listened in 1976 when President Carter asked her to be the first black woman to deliver a keynote address at the Democratic convention. When she asked and answered one of those great questions with which we still struggle, she said, "Are we to be one people bound together by common spirit, sharing in a common endeavor, or will we become a divided nation?" "A spirit of harmony will survive in America," she said, "only if each of us remember that we share a common destiny."
We listened in 1992 when she honored me by again giving a keynote address at the convention. "The American Dream is slipping away from too many people," she said. She said it would only be changed if we developed an environment characterized by a devotion to the public interest, to public servants, to tolerance and to love.
After I became president, I asked her to chair the United States Commission on Immigration Reform. And she made us listen again when she reminded all sides on that delicate and difficult issue that we must remain both a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws.
Barbara Jordan's life was a monument to the three great threads that run constantly throughout the fabric of American history -- our love of liberty, our belief in progress, our search for common ground. Wherever she could and whenever she stood to speak, she jolted the nation's attention with her artful and articulate defense of the Constitution, the American Dream, and the common heritage and destiny we share, whether we like it or not.
Barbara Jordan loved her family, her loved ones, her friends, her allies, her teachers. She loved Texas and how she loved our beloved country. She reveled in its never-ending struggle to live up to our highest ideals.
She once said this: "All we are trying to do is to make this government of the United States honest. We only ask that when we stand up and talk about one nation under God with liberty and justice for all, we want to be able to look up at the flag, put our right hands over our hearts, repeat those words, and know that they are true." Well, if Barbara wasn't in the Constitution when it was first written, she made sure that once she got in, she stayed in it all the way. (Applause.)
She also did all she could as a lawmaker and as a teacher to give future generations of Americans for all time to come equal standing under that Constitution. That's what she was doing when God called her home -- working with the students at the University of Texas, Lyndon Johnson School of Public Affairs.
In 1994, in one of the most enjoyable moments of my presidency, I was proud to give to Barbara Jordan the nation's highest award to a civilian -- the Presidential Medal of Freedom. (Applause.) I noticed her wearing it today. And it touched me so to know that she is now going to a place where her rewards will be greater.
As Ann Richards said, if we're all going to tell the truth today, Barbara Jordan made every one of us stand a little straighter, speak a little clearer and be a little stronger. She took to heart what her Grandpa Patten told her when she was a little girl: "You just trot your own horse, and don't get into the same rut as everyone else." (Laughter.) Well, she sure trotted her own horse, and she made her own path wide and deep.
Let me close with these lines from a poem I love by Stephen Spender. I understand Barbara loved it, too, and liked to read it aloud. I can't read it as well as she would have, but you'll see it could have been written about her. "I think continually of those who are truly great, who from the womb remembered the soul's history, who wore at their hearts the fire's center. Borne of the sun, they traveled a short while toward the sun, and left the vivid air signed in their honor."
Barbara's magnificent voice is silenced. But she left the vivid air signed in her honor. Barbara, we the people will miss you. We thank you and Godpseed. (Applause.)
END 10:47 A.M. CST
IN MEMORIAM
BARBARA JORDAN
Teaching by deed as well as by word, Barbara Jordan has dramatically articulated an enduring standard of morality in American politics. Guided by an unshakable faith in the Constitution, she insists that it is the sacred duty of those who hold power to govern ethically and to preserve the rule of law. As the first African American woman elected to the Texas State Senate, her conspicuous abilities led her to the United States Congress, where her brilliant oratory and meticulous judgement earned our lasting respect. She continues her life’s work as a teacher, explaining and analyzing complex issues of moral responsibility in politics and imbuing the leaders of tomorrow with the ability to follow her formidable lead.
– Citation by President Clinton in awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Barbara Jordan, August 1994.
Barbara Jordan, who died in Austin on January 17, 1996, at the age of 59, was a member of the faculty of The University of Texas for 17 years. Accepting a professorship in the LBJ School of Public Affairs after three terms in Congress, she brought with her a national reputation as an advocate for the highest standards in public service. The vigor with which she had pursued her electoral career was channeled smoothly into her announced intention to become a "first rate professor." She succeeded abundantly.
There was little in the immediate background of Barbara Jordan to suggest the contours of her career. Houston’s Fifth Ward, where she was born on February 21, 1936, offered scant support for an ambitious African American child–except for a grandfather who believed in her potential. Nonetheless, she graduated with honors from Texas Southern University and subsequently earned an LLB from Boston University. The private practice of law, however, was not to be her career, although respect for the law suffused every aspect of her life. The rule of law, especially as exemplified in the Constitution of the United States, was the bedrock of her public service, her teaching, and her impact on her many students.
Public Service
The raw materials of Barbara Jordan’s career tell some of the story: a member of the Texas Senate from 1966 to 1972; the first Black Texan to be elected to Congress, where she served from 1972 to 1978; appointed to various legislative committees at both the state and national levels, notably including the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate Hearings of 1974 (where television first introduced her to a nationwide audience); the first Black woman to keynote a Democratic convention (1976); post-1979 appointments to an array of panels, boards, and commissions. Too many awards to count, too many honors to list.
The theme that tied together the multiple public service activities of Barbara Jordan was her conviction that government could be a force for good, that public servants operate under a constitutional mandate to implement effectively (and ethically) the public will. The rhetoric with which she defended public life at its best, and the voice that elevated that rhetoric, left indelible traces on her colleagues and on those who heard her on television and radio. Lyndon Johnson understood her impact as early as 1971 when he said, ". . . her reputation as a political leader has exceeded the boundaries of Texas. She is known nationally as a leader who is concerned for the rights, the hopes, the dreams and aspirations of all the people."
In her 1998 biography, Barbara Jordan: American Hero , Mary Beth Rogers emphasized that what to many seemed a career of steady success was actually a life punctuated by difficulties. Defeated in her first run for the legislature, encountering blatant racism in the Texas Senate of the 1960s, and somewhat alone in her years in Congress, Barbara Jordan, a very private woman, transcended these and her many physical disabilities without complaint, without self-pity. She understood the game of politics and played it well, explaining to her colleagues and later to her students that a public servant has a "moral imperative to be effective." Both as an active public servant and as a teacher, she became symbolic of what good public service can mean.
Teaching
It was wholly appropriate that Barbara Jordan should hold the Lyndon B. Johnson Centennial Chair in National Policy at the LBJ School. When she died, she was about to teach, once again, a seminar on "Political Values and Ethics." A paragraph from the spring 1996 syllabus describing that course indicates its scope.
Under our system of government we choose a representative we tell him/her to govern. This system of selection does not guarantee that the assignment is understood. The citizenry (and frequently the politician as well) is unclear about the assignment and sometimes confuse representation and governing. As the ethical principles are sorted out, this course will focus on the difference between governing and representing and whether the values, choices, and ethics vary with the nature of the assignment.
In short, B. J. (as generations of her students called her) was in the business of training public servants, public administrators, public citizens, and–as she also hoped–holders of high elective offices. To her there was a continuum between a school of public policy and the world into which the graduates of such a school would shortly move. Although her career as a teacher lasted only 17 years, B. J. lived long enough to rejoice in seeing her former students become city managers, state officials, and highly-placed federal employees. Her devotion to teaching was repaid many times over by the continued loyalty of those who were fortunate enough to take her classes–loyalty both to their teacher and to her passionately held convictions.
As a teacher, Barbara Jordan did not cease to operate when she was beyond the Forty Acres. Daughter of a Baptist minister, she used many secular pulpits. Constantly in demand for speeches, conferences, board memberships, and media appearances, she selected the places where she thought she would be most useful–such as becoming the ethics "czar" for a Texas governor or cochairing the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. There is reason to believe she could have received several high national appointments during her years in Austin, had she encouraged those who respected and admired her.
The Jordan Legacy
Barbara Jordan enjoyed life: she loved barbecue and basketball, could sing "Frankie and Johnnie" with gusto, was fond of money but didn’t like to spend it, had a great talent for friendship, and was a practical joker. These facets of her character, however, were largely unknown to those who looked up to her as mentor and legend. What people heard was her message which, although eloquently varied, steadily emphasized the theme of governance, the essential tie between ethics and democratic effectiveness, and the need for continued support of basic constitutional principles. As the years passed, requests for her presence on platforms, on letterheads, on commissions continued. Public statements, interviews, a coedited book, The Great Society , among other things, kept her in the public eye. As an array of illnesses afflicted her and she became wheelchair bound, her mobility was inevitably sharply diminished, but the clarity of her thought–not at all.
When she died one month short of a 60th birthday celebration that she would have (ruefully) enjoyed, Barbara Jordan had, in short, become emblematic–for Americans of all races, and, to a lesser extent, to audiences abroad. Behind her lay the barriers she had surmounted. The images that she had imprinted on so many minds persist, and the sound of her voice proclaiming the value of loyalty in an age of disloyalty–loyalty to country, to the art of politics, to this university, and in essence to all human beings.
After her death, Barbara Jordan’s students created an annual "Barbara Jordan Memorial Forum on Diversity in Public Policy" at the LBJ School. Mary Beth Rogers’ insightful biography and many articles and media features have testified to her enduring importance. She has been the subject of a play, "E Pluribus Unum: Barbara Jordan–One Voice," written by Deborah Hamilton-Lynne and starring Franchelle Stewart Dorn.
Tributes to Barbara Jordan have ranged from the eulogies at memorial services delivered by President Clinton, Bill Moyers, and others who knew her well, to letters written by men and women, African Americans, Anglos, Hispanics, and others, who knew her only from afar. Their theme remains essentially the same: B. J. was a unique human being who, through her life, changed and bettered the world around her.
But Barbara Jordan herself should have the last word (in fact she would have wanted it). At the Democratic National Convention in 1976 she said:
"This is the great danger that 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. . . . If that happens, who then will speak for America? . . . who then will speak for the common good?"
<signed>
Larry R. Faulkner, President
The University of Texas at Austin
<signed>
John R. Durbin, Secretary
The General Faculty
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Medal History
