Barbara Jordan would have been 83 today.
(Thanks to Pam for alerting me to the anniversary, back in 2008.)
In her stirring keynote address at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, held in New York City in Madison Square Garden, Jordan said:
A government is invigorated when each of us is willing to participate in shaping the future of this nation.
In this election year we must define the common good and begin again to shape a common good and begin again to shape a common future. Let each person do his or her part. If one citizen is unwilling to participate, all of us are going to suffer. For the American idea, though it is shared by all of us, is realized in each one of us.
I covered that convention as a stringer for a western television station. I recall the spirit in the hall when Jordan spoke, and the great spirit that enveloped the entire convention and the City of New York. After the convention every night the cops would stop taxis so delegates could ride. I remember watching two cops help a woman out of a wheel chair and into a cab, and the cabbie saying that the cops had never done that before — and he liked it. Jimmy Carter came out of that convention, and won the election, defeating Gerald Ford.
43 years ago. In 2008 I wrote: “Barbara Jordan didn’t live to see her party come up with a woman and an African American man as the top two candidates for the nomination. That’s too bad. She could have given a great, appropriate speech. Maybe the Dems oughtta just run a film of Jordan from 1976.”
Barack Obama won that election in 2008, and Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination in 2016. Jordan didn’t live to see that, either.
In 2019, we face a Constitutional crisis again, with a crook in the White House hoping Americans forget about the Constitution. If ever we needed ghosts to come back to help us, we need the ghost of Barbara Jordan now. We could just run a film of her speech at the House Judiciary Committee markup of the articles of impeachment for Richard Nixon.
Also:
- Barbara Jordan and Lyndon Johnson: An oral history
- When things get tough, the patriotic listen to Barbara Jordan
- Barbara Jordan
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 