Barbara Jordan

Texas orator whose Watergate testimony and 1976 keynote made her a national moral voice.

Overview

A Houston lawyer elected to the Texas Senate in 1966, the first Black state senator since Reconstruction, Jordan won a House seat in 1972, the first woman and first Black member of Congress from Texas in the twentieth century. On national television in July 1974 she grounded her impeachment standard in the Constitution's intent, riveting the nation. First Black keynote speaker at a Democratic convention in 1976, she championed the Voting Rights Act extension and motor voter registration, and delivered the 1992 keynote from a wheelchair. Her hearing on immigration in 1995 framed the modern enforcement debate.