- Born
- 21 February 1936Houston, Texas, USA
- Died
- 17 January 1996Austin, Texas, USA · aged 59
Barbara Jordan
Her speech during the Watergate hearings made the Texas congresswoman a nationally recognised voice for constitutional government.
Barbara Jordan was born in Houston, Texas, in 1936. The daughter of a Baptist minister, she grew up in the city’s segregated Fifth Ward, studied law at Boston University and returned to Texas to practise.
In 1966 she became the first Black person elected to the Texas Senate since 1883. Her election to the US House of Representatives in 1972 made her the first Black woman to represent a Southern state in Congress.
During the House Judiciary Committee’s 1974 impeachment hearings, Jordan’s speech on the Constitution and presidential accountability brought her national attention. Two years later she became the first Black woman to deliver a keynote address at a Democratic National Convention. Her measured delivery and legal arguments made her a distinctive public presence.
After leaving Congress, Jordan taught at the University of Texas at Austin. She shared her private life with Nancy Earl for more than two decades, but did not discuss her sexuality publicly; the relationship became more widely known after her death. Jordan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and died in 1996. Her public record remains closely associated with the responsibilities of democratic institutions.