American lawyer and civil rights activist

Vernon Eulion Jordan Jr. (August 15, 1935 – March 1, 2021) was an American business executive and civil rights activist who worked for various civil rights movement organizations before becoming a close advisor to President Bill Clinton.

Jordan grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and graduated in 1957 from DePauw University. In the early 1960s, he started his civil rights career, most notably being a part of a team of lawyers that desegregated the University of Georgia. He then continued to work for multiple civil rights organizations until the late 1980s. In the early 1990s, he became a close ally and friend of Bill Clinton and he served as part of Clinton's transition team. After Clinton's departure, Jordan began working with multiple corporations and investment banking firms up until his death. During the 2004 election, he worked for John Kerry's campaign.

Contents

• 1 Early life and education
• 2 Legal career and activism
• 3 **ination attempt
• 4 Clinton administration
• 5 Later activities and death
• 6 Marriage and family
• 7 Publications
• 8 Legacy and honors
• 9 References
• 10 External links

Early life and education

Jordan was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to Mary Belle (Griggs) and Vernon E. Jordan Sr. He had a brother, Windsor. He was a cousin of James Shaw, a musician who is professionally billed as The Mighty Hannibal.

Jordan grew up with his family in the segregated societal cosmos of Atlanta during the 1950s. He was an honors graduate of David T. Howard High School. Rejected for a summer internship with an insurance company after his sop*re year in college because of his race, he earned money for college for a few summers by working as a chauffeur to former city mayor Robert Maddox, then a banker. Jordan graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, in 1957. In an oral history interview archived at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, an interview conducted in 1964 with Robert Penn Warren for the book Who Speaks for the Negro?, Jordan described his difficulties at DePauw as the only black student in a cl* of 400. He earned a Juris Doctor at Howard University School of Law in 1960. He was a member of the Omega Psi Phi and Sigma Pi Phi fraternities.

Legal career and activism

Jordan returned to Atlanta to join the law office of Donald L. Hollowell, a civil rights activist. The firm, including Constance Motley, sued the University of Georgia for racial discrimination in its admission policies. The suit ended in 1961 with a Federal Court order demanding the admission of two African Americans, Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton E. Holmes. Jordan personally escorted Hunter past a group of angry white protesters to the university admissions office.

Jordan working on a voter education project in 1967.

After leaving private law practice in the early 1960s, Jordan became directly involved in activism in the field, serving as the Georgia field director for the National *ociation for the Advancement of Colored People. From the NAACP, he moved to the Southern Regional Council and then to the Voter Education Project.

In 1970, Jordan became executive director of the United Negro College Fund. He was president of the National Urban League from 1971 to 1981.

While still with the National Urban League, Jordan in 1981 said of the Ronald Reagan administration:

I do not challenge the conservatism of this administration. I do challenge its failure to exhibit a comp*ionate conservatism that adapts itself to the realities of a society ridden by cl* and race distinction.

That year he resigned from the National Urban League to take a position as legal counsel with the Washington, D.C., office of the Dallas law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.

**ination attempt

On May 29, 1980, Jordan was shot and seriously wounded outside the Marriott Inn in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He was accompanied by Martha Coleman at the time. Police thought initially that it might have been a domestic incident related to Coleman's life. Then-president Jimmy Carter visited Jordan while he was recovering, an event that became the first story covered by the new network CNN. Joseph Paul Franklin was acquitted in 1982 of charges of attempted murder. However, in 1996, after having been convicted of murder in another case, Franklin admitted to having committed the shooting.

Clinton administration

Vernon Jordan shares conversation with famed photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. At the time, Jordan was visiting President Clinton on the island of Martha's Vineyard.

Jordan, a friend and political adviser to Bill Clinton, served as part of Clinton's transition team in 1992–93, shortly after Clinton was elected president. In the words of The New York Times:

For Mr. Clinton, Mr. Jordan's roles have been manifold: Golfing companion. Smoother of ruffled feathers (he put the president back in touch with Zoë Baird after the withdrawal of her nomination to be attorney general). Consoler in chief (after Mr. Clinton was defeated for re-election as governor in 1980, after the suicide of Vincent W. Foster Jr. in 1993). Conduit to the high and mighty (he took Mr. Clinton in 1991 to the Bilderberg conference in Germany, an exclusive annual retreat for politicians and businessmen). Go-between (he told Mike Espy he had to go as secretary of agriculture, helped win Warren Christopher a larger role as secretary of state and sounded out Gen. Colin L. Powell for a Cabinet job).

In 1998 Jordan helped Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern, find a job after she left the White House, and recommended an attorney. His role was considered controversial given the scandal that the Clinton administration had suffered because of the president's involvement with the intern, and Jordan testified several times before the grand jury convened by independent counsel Kenneth Starr. On October 1, 2003, a United States court of appeals rejected Jordan's claim for reimbur*t for legal services related to *isting Clinton in scandals regarding Lewinsky and Paula Jones. Jordan asked the government to pay him $302,719, but he was paid only $1,215.

In 1998, Jordan was interviewed by CBS news television program 60 Minutes.

In the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, Jordan was one of three individuals (with Lewinsky and Sidney Blumenthal) of whom House impeachment managers recorded a deposition.

Later activities and death

Jordan at the LBJ Presidential Library in 2019.

From January 2000 on, Jordan was a senior managing director with Lazard Freres & Co. LLC, an investment banking firm. He was also a member of the board of directors of multiple corporations, including American Express, J.C. Penney Corporation, Asbury Automotive Group, and the Dow Jones & Company.

He was a member of the board of directors of Revlon, Sara Lee, Corning, Xerox, and RJR Nabisco during the 1989 leveraged buyout fight between RJR Nabisco CEO F. Ross Johnson and Henry R. Kravis and his company KKR. A close friend of Jordan's was the Xerox ty* Charles Peter McColough, who persuaded Jordan to join the board of trustees at Xerox. McColough served as a mentor and friend of Jordan's until McColough's death.

In the 2004 presidential campaign, Jordan led debate preparation and negotiation efforts on behalf of John Kerry, the Democratic nominee for president. That year he was elected president of The Economic Club of Washington, D.C.

In 2006, Jordan served as a member of the Iraq Study Group, which was formed to make recommendations on U.S. policy in Iraq.

In May 2017, Jordan served as the commencement speaker at the 163rd commencement of Syracuse University.

Jordan died at his home in Washington, D.C. on March 1, 2021, at the age of 85.

Marriage and family

Jordan married Shirley (née Yarbrough), who died in 1985. They have a daughter, Vickee Jordan Adams, who works in media relations for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.

In 1986 he remarried, to Ann Dibble Jordan and *umed her four children - Antoinette "Toni", Mercer, Janice and Jacqueline. He has nine grandchildren, seven from his second wife's children, Janice, Mercer, and Toni.

Publications

• His memoir, Vernon Can Read! (2001), covered his life through the 1980s, and was written with historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed.
• A collection of his public speeches, with commentary, called Make It Plain: Standing Up and Speaking Out (2008)

Jordan also served as the narrator for American composer Joseph Schwantner's New Morning for the World: "Daybreak of Freedom," a collection of quotations from various speeches by Martin Luther King Jr.

Legacy and honors

• Jordan was a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Bilderberg Group.
• 1983, Barnard College awarded Jordan its highest honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction.
• 2001, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP for lifetime achievement.
• 2001 – his memoir won the Best Nonfiction Book for 2001 from the Black Caucus of the American Library *ociation. In 2002 it won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and a Trailblazer Award from the Metropolitan Black Bar *ociation.
• Jordan was honored as The New Jewish Home's Eight over Eighty Gala 2017 honoree.
• Howard University School of Law's library was named in his honor after his death in March 2021.

References

External links

• Ubben Lecture/Presidential Inauguration Address at DePauw University; October 29, 2016
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Oral History Interview with Vernon E. Jordan, March 17, 1964. Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries

Activist
groups

• Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
• Atlanta Student Movement
• Black Panther Party
• Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
• Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
• Committee for Freedom Now
• Committee on Appeal for Human Rights
• Council for United Civil Rights Leadership
• Council of Federated Organizations
• Dallas County Voters League
• Deacons for Defense and Justice
• Georgia Council on Human Relations
• Highlander Folk School
• Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
• Lowndes County Freedom Organization
• Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
• Montgomery Improvement *ociation
• NAACP
  • Youth Council
• Nashville Student Movement
• Nation of Islam
• Northern Student Movement
• National Council of Negro Women
• National Urban League
• Operation Breadbasket
• Regional Council of Negro Leadership
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
• Southern Regional Council
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
• The Freedom Singers
• United Auto Workers (UAW)
• Wednesdays in Mississippi
• Women's Political Council

Activists

• Ralph Abernathy
• Victoria Gray Adams
• Zev Aelony
• Mathew Ahmann
• Muhammad Ali
• William G. Anderson
• Gwendolyn Armstrong
• Arnold Aronson
• Ella Baker
• James Baldwin
• Marion Barry
• Daisy Bates
• Harry Belafonte
• James Bevel
• Claude Black
• Gloria Blackwell
• Randolph Blackwell
• Unita Blackwell
• Ezell Blair Jr.
• Joanne Bland
• Julian Bond
• Joseph E. Boone
• William Holmes Borders
• Amelia Boynton
• Bruce Boynton
• Raylawni Branch
• Stanley Branche
• Ruby Bridges
• Aurelia Browder
• H. Rap Brown
• Ralph Bunche
• Guy Carawan
• Stokely Carmichael
• Johnnie Carr
• James Chaney
• J. L. Chestnut
• Shirley Chisholm
• Colia Lafayette Clark
• Ramsey Clark
• Septima Clark
• Xernona Clayton
• Eldridge Cleaver
• Kathleen Cleaver
• Charles E. Cobb Jr.
• Annie Lee Cooper
• Dorothy Cotton
• Claudette Colvin
• Vernon Dahmer
• Jonathan Daniels
• Angela Davis
• Joseph DeLaine
• Dave Dennis
• Annie Devine
• Patricia Stephens Due
• Joseph Ellwanger
• Charles Evers
• Medgar Evers
• Myrlie Evers-Williams
• Chuck *er
• James Farmer
• Walter Fauntroy
• James Forman
• Marie Foster
• Golden Frinks
• Andrew Goodman
• Robert Graetz
• Fred Gray
• Jack Greenberg
• Dick Gregory
• Lawrence Guyot
• Prathia Hall
• Fannie Lou Hamer
• Fred Hampton
• William E. Harbour
• Vincent Harding
• Dorothy Height
• Lola Hendricks
• Aaron Henry
• Oliver Hill
• Donald L. Hollowell
• James Hood
• Myles Horton
• Zilphia Horton
• T. R. M. Howard
• Ruby Hurley
• Jesse Jackson
• Jimmie Lee Jackson
• Richie Jean Jackson
• T. J. Jemison
• Esau Jenkins
• Barbara Rose Johns
• Vernon Johns
• Frank Minis Johnson
• Clarence Jones
• J. Charles Jones
• Matthew Jones
• Vernon Jordan
• Tom Kahn
• Clyde Kennard
• A. D. King
• C.B. King
• Coretta Scott King
• Martin Luther King Jr.
• Martin Luther King Sr.
• Bernard Lafayette
• James Lawson
• Bernard Lee
• Sanford R. Leigh
• Jim Letherer
• Stanley Levison
• John Lewis
• Viola Liuzzo
• Z. Alexander Looby
• Joseph Lowery
• Clara Luper
• Danny Lyon
• Malcolm X
• Mae Mallory
• Vivian Malone
• Bob Mants
• Thurgood Marshall
• Benjamin Mays
• Franklin McCain
• Charles McDew
• Ralph McGill
• Floyd McKissick
• Joseph McNeil
• James Meredith
• William Ming
• Jack Minnis
• Amzie Moore
• Cecil B. Moore
• Douglas E. Moore
• Harriette Moore
• Harry T. Moore
• Queen Mother Moore
• William Lewis Moore
• Irene Morgan
• Bob Moses
• William Moyer
• Elijah Muhammad
• Diane Nash
• Charles Neblett
• Huey P. Newton
• Edgar Nixon
• Jack O'Dell
• James Orange
• Rosa Parks
• James Peck
• Charles Person
• Homer Plessy
• Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
• Fay Bellamy Powell
• Rodney N. Powell
• Al Raby
• Lincoln Ragsdale
• A. Philip Randolph
• George Raymond
• George Raymond Jr.
• Bernice Johnson Reagon
• Cordell Reagon
• James Reeb
• Frederick D. Reese
• Walter Reuther
• Gloria Richardson
• David Richmond
• Bernice Robinson
• Jo Ann Robinson
• Angela Russell
• Bayard Rustin
• Bernie Sanders
• Michael Schwerner
• Bobby Seale
• Cleveland Sellers
• Charles Sherrod
• Alexander D. Shimkin
• Fred Shuttlesworth
• Modjeska Monteith Simkins
• Glenn E. Smiley
• A. Maceo Smith
• Kelly Miller Smith
• Mary Louise Smith
• Maxine Smith
• Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson
• Charles Kenzie Steele
• Hank Thomas
• Dorothy Tillman
• A. P. Tureaud
• Hartman Turnbow
• Albert Turner
• C. T. Vivian
• Wyatt Tee Walker
• Hollis Watkins
• Walter Francis White
• Roy Wilkins
• Hosea Williams
• Kale Williams
• Robert F. Williams
• Andrew Young
• Whitney Young
• Sammy Younge Jr.
• Bob Zellner
• James Zwerg

Influences

• Nonviolence
  • Padayatra
• Sermon on the Mount
• Mahatma Gandhi
  • Ahimsa
  • Satyagraha
• The Kingdom of God Is Within You
• Frederick Dougl*
• W. E. B. Du Bois
• Mary McLeod Bethune

Related

• Jim Crow laws
• Lynching in the United States
• Plessy v. Ferguson
  • Separate but equal
• Buchanan v. Warley
• Hocutt v. Wilson
• Sweatt v. Painter
• Hernandez v. Texas
• Loving v. Virginia
• African-American women in the movement
• Fifth Circuit Four
• 16th Street Baptist Church
• Kelly Ingram Park
• A.G. Gaston Motel
• Brown Chapel
• Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
• Holt Street Baptist Church
• Edmund Pettus Bridge
• March on Washington Movement
• African-American churches attacked
• List of lynching victims in the United States
• Freedom songs
  • "*baya"
  • "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize"
  • "Oh, Freedom"
  • "This Little Light of Mine"
  • "We Shall Not Be Moved"
  • "We Shall Overcome"
• Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam
  • "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence"
• Watts riots
• Voter Education Project
• 1960s counterculture
• Eyes on the Prize

Honoring

• In popular culture
• Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
  • other King memorials
• Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument
• Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument
• Freedom Rides Museum
• Freedom Riders National Monument
• Civil Rights Memorial
• National Civil Rights Museum
• National Voting Rights Museum
• St. Augustine Foot Soldiers Monument
• Civil Rights Movement Archive
• King Center for Nonviolent Social Change

Noted
historians

• Taylor Branch
• Clayborne Carson
• John Dittmer
• Michael Eric Dyson
• Chuck *er
• Adam Fairclough
• David Garrow
• David Halberstam
• Vincent Harding
• Steven F. Lawson
• Doug McAdam
• Diane McWhorter
• Charles M. Payne
• Timothy Tyson
• Akinyele Umoja
• Movement photographers

:Civil rights movement portal