Houston to honor pioneer Jordan
Proposals sought for memorial to congresswoman
Houston is seeking proposals for an outdoor art installation honoring late Houston congresswoman Barbara Jordan, the first black woman from a Southern state to serve in Congress.
The art, slated for completion in late 2020, would become just the second city-owned outdoor installation to honor a woman and one of just a handful across Houston. The city’s art collection includes almost 650 pieces, according to the Houston Arts Alliance.
Plans call for the artwork installation to be outside the African American Library at the Gregory School, part of the Houston Public Library system. Artists have until Sept. 23 to submit proposals, and the city has set the installation’s budget at $235,000.
Jordan, who died in 1996, is a civil rights icon and pioneer for black female politicians, known for her stirring speeches and the notable role she played in Richard
Nixon’s impeachment. She became the first black woman to serve in the Texas Senate in 1966 and, several years later, became the first African American from Texas elected to Congress.
“Barbara Jordan is a hero of mine and she has inspired thousands, if not millions of girls and women to grow up and serve and break those barriers,” said Robin Paoli, a board member of Houston Women March On. “She’s a civil rights hero, and she broke new ground for women of all descriptions.”
Still, a monument honoring Jordan would be just the fourth outdoor statue in Houston commemorating women. The other three are Elizabeth Stevens MacGregor, the wife of real estate developer Henry Frederick MacGregor; Vivian L. Smith, a philanthropist and businesswoman, and Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas, a Houston native who died aboard United Flight 93, which crashed on Sept. 11, 2001.
Mayor Sylvester Turner acknowledged Houston’s lack of public art honoring historic female figures.
“It’s well past time we memorialize our hero Barbara Jordan with inspiring public art, especially since the city’s art collection contains only one outdoor sculpture or monument honoring a woman,” Turner said in a statement.
The only sculpture honoring a woman on city land is the one of McGregor, who in 1927 commissioned what became a bronze statue embedded in a 26,000pound block of granite. MacGregor hired Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor who designed and oversaw construction on the Mount Rushmore sculpture, to create the piece, known colloquially as Peggy.
Over the years, vandals often targeted the statue, at one point detaching one of the arms and breaking a fountain attached to the statue. The piece was moved in 1996 to the city-owned MacGregor Park — named after MacGregor’s husband — along Brays Bayou.
Meanwhile, Smith’s statue sits outside the Astrodome, commemorating her affinity for the Astros, whose games she rarely missed. A plaque behind Smith’s statue reads, “She loved the Astros.”
The sculpture honoring Grandcolas sits in a memorial garden in Market Square Park, part of a memorial with a fountain honoring the other victims on Grandcolas’ flight.
A statue honoring Jordan, Paoli said, marks a step in the right direction. But she said the city should continue looking for ways to honor “black, Latina, Asian and white women who have contributed to our world.”
“We are grateful for the men whose positive contributions have made Texas a better place to live,” Paoli said. “However, Texas was founded and led and continues to be powered by women, and it’s past time that the women who have contributed to the tremendous success of Houston, and Texas generally, are honored.”
Soon after she was elected to Congress, Jordan was thrust into the spotlight when — with the backing of fellow Texan Lyndon B. Johnson — she secured a seat on the House Judiciary Committee.
By 1974, the committee was embroiled in Nixon’s impeachment proceedings, prompting one of Jordan’s best-known addresses in which she called for impeachment and famously said, “I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.”
Jordan went on to deliver a keynote speech at the 1976 Democratic National Convention. She retired from the House after three terms and went on to be a writer and professor. Bound to a wheelchair by multiple sclerosis, she delivered speeches at the 1988 and 1992 Democratic conventions. Jordan died in 1996 at age 59.
“When Barbara Jordan talked, we listened,” President Bill Clinton said at her funeral.
On a webpage soliciting artwork proposals, the city offered few specific guidelines, asking that the installation “incorporates themes central to Barbara Jordan’s life and legacy.”
The piece also should “respond to the history and architecture of the renovated, historic (African American) library” and its location within the city’s historic Freedmen’s Town, the webpage reads.
To select the artist, a panel of “arts professionals, stakeholders, and community representatives” will review submissions, before choosing a short list of three artists. The finalists will receive $2,000 stipends to create concept designs, before the city picks the artist in January 2020.