Barbara Jordan
(1936–1996)

In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee held deliberations that resulted in a vote to impeach President Richard Nixon. Despite the uncertainty and anxiety of that unprecedented time, Barbara Jordan said, "My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." Although she was born in a poverty-stricken ghetto in Houston, Texas, Jordan was able to devote her life to supporting the Constitution. She became one of the most influential women in American politics during the 1970s.

Jordan's parents impressed upon their three daughters the value of education. Jordan graduated from Texas Southern University and earned a law degree from Boston University in 1959. She began her political career in the presidential election campaign of 1960, working for John F. Kennedy. In 1966, Jordan was elected to the Texas Senate and in 1972 to the U.S. Congress. She retired from Congress in 1978 and accepted a position teaching government at the University of Texas. In her autobiography, Barbara Jordan: A Self Portrait (1979), she said of her retirement from Congress, "I thought that my role now was to be one of the voices in the country defining where we were, where we were going, what the policies were that were being pursued, and where the holes in those policies were."

A  |  B  |  C  |  D  |  E  |  F  |  G  |  H  |  I  |  J  |  K  |  L  |  M
N  |  O  |  P  |  Q  |  R  |  S  |  T  |  U  |  V  |  W  |  X  |  Y  |  Z