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Barbara Charline Jordan
(1936 - 1996) U.S.A.

Barbara Jordan

Attorney, stateswoman, educator

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Born in Houston, Texas, to a Baptist minister and a domestic worker, Jordan ws educated in the city's segregated public schools and encountered racism on a daily basis while growing up; her grandfather was wrongly convicted of killing a white police officer.

She graduated in 1956 from the historically black Texas Southern University, and earned a law degree from Boston University in 1959. After teaching political science at Tuskegee Institute in 1959-60, she returned to Huston to set up her own legal practice, briefly using her parents' kitchen table as an office.

Jordan's interest in Democratic Party politics began with John Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign. Jordan was the first black woman to be elected to the Texas state senate. The first black Southern woman to be elected to the House of Representatives, serving three terms from 1972-1978. Jordan addressed the Democratic national convention in 1976, becoming the first black woman to do so.

Jordan's oratory skills received national attention during the televised coverage of the House Judiciary Committee's debate regarding impeaching President Nixon. Following her tenure in Congress, Jordan took a teaching position at the University of Texas at Austin. Awarded the National Medal of Honor by President Carter in 1994.

In 1976, the closeted Jordan refused to co-sponsor a federal gay rights bill, Jordan was "outed" posthumously by an article in the March 1996 issue of The Advocate.

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Source: excerpts from: Aldrich R. & Wotherspoon G., Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History, from WWII to Present Day, Routledge, London, 2001 - et alii

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