Barbara C. Jordan

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Barbara C. Jordan

Barbara C Jordan was born in Texas on February 21, 1936, and was raised there. During high school, she decided to become a lawyer, but was unable to attend University of Texas at Austin due to the segregation laws.

Instead, Barbara graduated with a law degree from Boston University School of Law, and taught Political Science at Tuskegee University (yes, the Tuskegee University where George Washington Carver taught) before deciding to delve into politics herself. 

She returned to Texas and became the first African-American elected to the Texas Senate since the Reconstruction Period. Driven to make a difference, she served in the Texas Senate for six years, including as Chair of the Labor and Management Committee, before moving over to Congress. As a Senator, she helped create the Worker’s Compensation Act. Have you ever been hurt at work and missed wages? Barbara C. Jordan is one of the reasons why you continue to get paid. She served another six years in Congress, where she fought for the advancement of fair employment, anti-discrimination laws, and civil rights. Congressional career highlights included being a co-sponsor of the Voter Rights Act renewal and the Community Reinvestment Act, which sought to combat redlining by providing equal access to credit lines to ethnic minorities and lower income working class people.

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President Nixon’s Impeachment Trial Opening Speech

Barbara is best known for her opening speech during President Nixon’s impeachment trials in 1974, where she stated that although the Constitution did not include her in the original “We the People,” she believed strongly in its words as a guiding document for how our government should run. As a member of the House Judiciary Committee, she played a key role in Nixon’s impeachment.

Life After Congress

After she retired from Congress, she continued her influence by teaching at University of Texas – Austin, the very school that denied her admission years before. She gave the keynote address at two Democratic National Conventions, one in 1976 and the second in 1992.

Barbara lived a quiet personal life, and all that is known is that she lived with a woman named Nancy Earl for over twenty years before Barbara’s death in 1996, following complications of pneumonia.

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