8. Barbara, Fighting Bob and Ella
Barbara Jordan
On February 21, 1936, Barbara Charline Jordan was born in Houston, Texas, to Benjamin Jordan, a Baptist minister and Arlyne Patten Jordan, who worked as a domestic. Every Sunday, a prayer ceremony in the kitchen of their house was followed by services at Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church. Barbara’s grandparents were there, except for Grandpa Patten, who stayed at home. Barbara was baptized at around the age of twelve, at which time Grandpa Jordan sang, “Wade in the water”. Ben, Arlyne, Barbara and her two sisters, Rose Mary and Bennie, sang in church and in choirs.
Barbara attended Roberson Elementary School, and in 1952, graduated as an honor student from Phillis Wheatley High School. She debated and as a senior was named Girl of the Year. The speech at the high school given by Edith S. Sampson was an inspiration to her to enter the law profession. She hoped to attend the University of Texas in Austin, but segregation ended that thought so she went to Texas Southern University (TSU), majoring in history and political science. Before she graduated in 1956, magna cum laude, she established herself as a national champion debater, outshining students from Brown and Yale as well as tying debaters from powerhouse Harvard.
For years, she was well aware of racism and her eyes were set on that same school in Cambridge, but figured that getting accepted there wouldn’t happen. She decided on Boston University. When she settled in her room the first night at the Charlesgate East, since the residence at 2 Rawley Strret was not quite ready, she asked herself, what in the world, Barbara Jordan, are you doing here? I guess I wasn’t the only one who posed that question to myself. Despite all her outstanding debate victories, like so many African Americans, Jordan knew she had to excel, just to keep up with the others. It wasn’t going to be an easy time.
Once in class, the language of the courts challenged her. In contracts she had to learn what promisee, promisor, lessor and lessee meant. One professor instructed them to abandon their boyfriends or girlfriends for the rest of the year. He said, don’t tell them you will see them later; no, tell them you will see them subsequently. The class would have to learn a new way of talking. Another challenge was that students wouldn’t see subject review and they only had a single exam at the end of the year. Jordan also saw that questions on tests were entirely different from what she had experienced. Both a yes or no answer could be acceptable, but you needed to show some thought and reasoning for that answer. Matters in court are never black or white, more often gray. For contracts, only a half-year course, she struggled through the exam, but received a 79, so she didn’t fail.
She received some assurance and relief, but found that the reading and studying she’d have to do wouldn’t leave much time for surfing the net. She took her books to deserted libraries and studied there, away from the others who might think she was stressed. Jordan also joined others for coffee and an African American study group, which she found to be very beneficial. Discussion of topics, even away from law, gave her more perspective. Talking out the decisions, issues, cases and facts was a needed supplement to mere reading.
At term’s end she flew home, her first time on a plane. Her grades would be sent to Texas. She mentioned to her parents that the university was tough, maybe as a way of keeping her parents from too high expectations. After a few days, the mail arrived from Boston University. She opened the envelope and realized, for success she needed an average of 75. Three grades topped 75, but for Procedure, she only managed a 70. Her 80 for Commercial Law meant she had conquered the first year and things would be better.
Despite all the commitment and work, for her second year she managed to find time for chapel. She didn’t have to go but she wanted to, doing so almost every Sunday. With the end of her third and final year she notified her father not to come to Boston until she received her final grades. What it had cost the family had been a financial burden, especially to her sisters. In 1959, when she was informed that she was a law school graduate, Barbara phoned home with word for the family to come to Boston. Ben bought a 1959 Olds 98 and he drove up north with Arlyne, Rose Mary and Bennie. Of the women who began the course, Barbara and her friend Issie Shelton were the only ones who graduated.
Jordan returned to Houston and passed the bar. The next step was to set up a law practice. She found an office on Lyons Avenue and added some furniture. Civil Rights laws had been passed but enforcements had crawled along at a snail’s pace. The new attorney felt that with the passage of the Brown decision nothing had changed. To make a difference, she had to be in a position where she could see the laws implemented. She started to seriously consider politics. Her first two tries in 1962 and 1964 didn’t get her a seat in the House of Representatives in Texas, but that changed in 1966. She became not only the first black in the Texas Senate since 1883, but also the first African American woman to serve there.
One day, while in session in the Texas Senate, a few senators were conversing, when one them uttered, and you know that no good xxxxxxxxxxxxxx. The speaker soon noticed Jordan in the room and apologized to her for his colorful group of words, the first of which denotes an offspring and the final one rhymes with ditch. Barbara merely replied, If a person is a no good xxxxxxxxxxxxx, then he’s a no good xxxxxxxxxxxxxx. This reply accomplished her goal of making the senators feel comfortable with her.
She was reelected in 1968 to the Senate, serving until 1972, when she was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives. No other African American woman had been pro tem of the state senate before her. On June 10, 1972, she served for one day as acting governor of Texas.
That day was one like no other, with invitations sent out to family, friends, the TSU choir and students from junior and senior high schools. It began with a breakfast, which all the family attended except for Barbara’s dad, who was sick and resting for the big event of the day. When his daughter was sworn in, he witnessed the event, dressed in a white jacket and a carnation. It was something he wasn’t about to miss. The all-day affair featured music by the TSU choir, the Jack Yates Band and the Phillis Wheatley Band. Before the affair at night, Jordan decided on a visit to see Ben who was now in the hospital, because of his heart problems. He slipped into a coma and died the next day. The headline in the New York Times read,