A LASTING LEGACY
Barbara Jordan broke down barriers for Black Texans, women
Most Houstonians have a Barbara Jordan story. As a lawyer, educator, politician and civil rights leader, she has just as many namesakes honoring her legacy throughout the Lone Star State.
Austin-Bergstrom International Airport’s main terminal is named after her. So is the institute for policy research at Jordan’s undergraduate alma mater, Texas State University, and the Barbara Jordan Career Center in her hometown of Houston, in addition to dozens of elementary, intermediate and high schools in various cities which also bear her name. There’s a park in Needville, too, and the former sorting facility in downtown Houston was named the Barbara Jordan Post Office.
Though before Jordan became a trailblazer for ambitious, Black Texans, her sister Rose Mary McGowan said that along with their late sister, Bennie Creswell, they enjoyed a normal childhood.
Jordan, the youngest, and her sisters grew up in Fifth Ward.
“Nothing was really that different from other kids. The three of us would walk to school and play the usual games when we got home, like jump rope and marbles,” McGowan said. “My grandfather got Barbara a bicycle. She was the first one to really ride.”
Jordan taught herself how to play guitar. And she loved to read.
“Barbara was serious when it came to learning and her debating skills when she was in high school,” said McGowan. “She always wanted to use the correct diction and annunciation. Serious study and research was done before she presented. That really helped her at the beginning of her public speaking career, which started at Good Hope Baptist Church.”
Jordan later credited a speech she heard in her teen years by Edith S. Sampson — lawyer, judge and the first Black U.S. delegate appointed to the United Nations — with inspiring her law career. After graduating with honors from Phillis Wheatley High School with honors in 1952, she majored in political science and history at Texas Southern University, an HBCU. There, she thrived as a national championship-winning debater, pledged Delta Sigma Theta, and graduated magma cum laude in 1956. Next, it was off to Boston University School of Law; she later taught political science at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama for one year before returning to Houston in 1960, where she started a private law practice.
Then came the call to public office. Ready for the challenge, Jordan answered — though her first two campaigns for the Texas House of Representatives were unsuccessful. The third time proved the charm, and in 1966 she won a seat in the Texas Senate, becoming the first Black woman and first African-American to do so since 1883, post-Reconstruction.
Around that time, a young Rodney Ellis took notice of Jordan’s historic victory.
“I was keeping up with it in junior high and high school. Even at an early age, I was very politically aware,” said the future Texas senator and Harris County commissioner. “I got a letter from her congratulating me on graduating from Worthing High School, it’s somewhere in my mother’s attic. It really touched meto have gotten that letter from her — and I still do that for graduates today — though now I include a voter registration form.”
Ellis and his peers even attempted to have a bus shuttle them to Austin on June 10, 1972, when Jordan served as acting governor of Texas for a day. Itwas a good year; Jordan became the first Black woman from the South elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
On the national stage in Washington, D.C., she earned the support of President Lyndon B. Johnson who helped her land a position on the House Judiciary Committee.
In 1974, Jordan’s televised opening statement for the Committee’s impeachment hearings of President Richard Nixon is widely regarded as one of the best speeches of all times.
Two years later, she became the first Black woman and first African-American to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.
“During her time in Washington, D.C., she came to Austin for a couple of forums at the LBJ School and I got to drive her around once,” said Ellis. Down the line, when a chief of staff position in her camp opened up, he sent an application. “She told me, ‘I’m probably going to give you this job offer, but if you’re as smart as I think you are, you’ll turn it down.’”
Ellis took her advice and obtained his master’s degree from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas instead. Their exchanges left an impression.
“She had a great sense of humor and a very aristocratic voice,” he recalled. “President Bush once said she had the voice of God.”
Ellis notes that Jordan was also sensitive about using her wheelchair in public. The physical effects of her multiple sclerosis began to show in 1973; she nearly drowned in her backyard swimming pool while doing physical therapy in 1988. Jordan’s 20-year partner, nurse and occasional speech-writer, Nancy Earl, resuscitated her.
By then she had retired from politics and become an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Jordan served as a member of the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors from1978 to 1980. President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994; she chaired the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform that year until her death.
Jordan, who suffered from leukemia, died from pneumonia-related complications on Jan. 17, 1996. She was the first Black woman to be buried in the Texas State Cemetery.
A statue of her likeness was erected on UT’s Austin campus in 2009; the effort was spearheaded by the Texas-Orange Jackets, the oldest women’s organization at the university.
The memory McGowan cherishes most is their time spent together when her younger sister lived in Austin.
“I would drive up and we’d get together with friends and neighbors who lived in the area,” she said. “We’d perform a number of sing-alongs together. Not many knew this, but she had a beautiful alto voice.”