Civil rights leader and D.C. power broker dies
Vernon Jordan, the civil rights leader and Washington power broker whose private counsel was sought by the powerful at the top levels of government and the corporate world, died Monday at his home in Washington. He was 85.
His death was confirmed in a statement by Vickee Jordan, his daughter. No cause was given.
Jordan got his first inkling of the world of power and influence that had largely been denied Black Americans when he was a waiter at lawyers club dinners catered by his mother in Atlanta and as
Vernon Jordan died Monday at his home in Washington. He was 85.
a driver for a wealthy banker, who was startled to discover that the tall Black youth at the wheel could read.
Despite the odds against him, Jordan went on to a dazzlingly successful career as a civil-rights leader and then a high-powered Washington lawyer in the mold of past capital insiders like Clark Clifford, Robert Strauss and Lloyd Cutler.
He then used that power to cultivate a who’s who of younger Black leaders.
“Monthly lunch with Vernon was filled with career advice, story telling and a reminder of the responsibility we had as Black leaders,” said Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation. “He reminded my generation that we stood on the shoulders of people who shed blood and gave their lives so we could have an opportunity.”
Jordan began his civil rights career after graduating from Howard University School of Law and in 1971 was selected to head the National Urban League while still in his 30s, a post in which he survived an assassination attempt in 1980.
While leading the Urban
League, he began to provide advice to leading political figures and socialize with them. His closest relationship was with Bill Clinton, whom he had befriended years before Clinton was elected president in 1992.
Jordan turned down the president’s offer to be nominated for attorney general, but he remained in Clinton’s orbit, recruited to handle sensitive issues for the president, in one case sounding out Gen. Colin Powell about joining the administration as secretary of state. (Powell chose to continue as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, having taken the post under Clinton’s predecessor, George H.W. Bush.)