There’s never been a Black woman governor in the US--except for 1 day in 1972. For 1 day, Barbara Jordan, the first Black woman to serve as president pro temp of the Texas Senate, sat behind the governor’s desk in Austin. It was hardly the first or last time she made history.
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Born & raised in Houston at the height of Jim Crow, Jordan attended segregated schools & graduated as part of the first class at Texas Southern University, a Black college that had been started by the Texas legislature to avoid integrating the University of Texas.
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A renowned debater, Jordan was inspired to enter law after hearing a speech in high school by Edith Sampson, the 1st Black US delegate appointed to the UN. Jordan graduated one of only two Black women in her Boston University law class, returning to Texas to open a practice.
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When Jordan launched her bid for the state senate in 1966, Texas hadn’t had a Black state senator in over 80 years. Her great-grandfather, Edward Patton, had been one of the last Black Texas state legislators of the Reconstruction-era--a legacy Jordan knew well.
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That year, Jordan became the first Black woman ever elected to the Texas legislature. She championed a state minimum wage law that covered farmworkers and helped dismantle the segregation and discrimination laws still on the books.
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Jordan worked with community leaders to integrate Texas public schools over a decade after Brown v. Board of Education. It was a discrimination she herself had experienced, and a cause she championed long before joining the legislature.
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In 1972, she became the 1st Black woman from the south elected to Congress. In the US House, she helped lead the Nixon impeachment efforts. She suffered from MS in the last decades of her life, a struggle President Clinton says hindered his desire to nominate her to SCOTUS.
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Jordan died in 1996 at age 59. It wasn’t until her obituary that many found out about her 30+ year relationship with her partner, Nancy Earl. A woman who brought so much hope and progress to our country had been told by political advisors to keep her personal life a secret.
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“Just remember the world is not a playground but a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday but an education. One eternal lesson for us all: to teach us how better we should love.” - Barbara Jordan
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