On January 20th 1996, Barbara Jordan's life was celebrated at the Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Houston. It was cold and rainy. Thousands of her friends and fans came: members of Congress and the cabinet, mayors and judges, dignitaries from the civil rights movement, local and state officials, former students labor leaders, bankers and corporation executives, precinct workers and neighbors, ministers and club women and men and women from Houston's Third and Fifth wards -- her people.
It was her pastor, a Good Hope preacher and orator who understood her roots and her spirit, who managed to transform all the memorial rhetoric into a simple rhythmic eloquence that captured the meaning of Barbara Jordan's life.
I like to think that if Dr King was the conductor of the orchestra,
Barbara would be in the first chair.
If Dr King opened the doors of segregation,
She taught us how to walk in and hold our heads up high.
If he allowed us to sit at any table and eat where we wanted,
She taught us how to act at the table.
So we leave here today focused in our minds
That we can be the best we can be
Because she was the best she was.
Barbara Jordan's body was buried on a hillside in the state Cemetery in Austin only a few feet away from the founding father of Texas, Steven F. Austin, who led a band of settlers into Texas in 1820 and precipitated a war with Mexico that led to Texas independence and eventually entry into the union. Her burial in the State Cemetery came 27 years after she had written a bill to outlaw segregated cemeteries in Texas. On one side of her final resting place was the daughter of Colonel James Fannin, one of the defenders of the Alamo, and on the other side was Brigadier General Ben Mccullough, a Confederate War hero who fought to preserve slavery. While her cemetery desegregation law would have allowed others to rest in that hallowed ground, Barbara Jordan in death as in life, was the first to garner enough power to make it happen. In 1996,one hundred and thirty years after the end of slavery, thirty years after she entered the Texas senate, in twenty-four years after she became the first African-American woman elected to congress from the south, Barbara Jordan became the first black woman to be buried in the state cemetery in Austin, Texas, the United States of America - her home. E pluribus unum at last.
Barbara Jordan American Hero by Mary Beth Rogers. Pg. 356.
Invitation: “She taught us (me) …” OR “E pluribus unum….“out of many, one.”
More about Barbara Jordan and her life and work as a Texas Representative.
We will meet for the Community Table Monday, March 17th at 4:30 PM ET. Contact us for information HERE.
We will begin our daily Shared Solitude: Embracing the gift of silence in community offered by our Courageous friend Emily - March 3rd through April 18th. See details on our Calendar HERE
Learn More About Circles of Courageous Commons HERE
Barbara Jordan is indeed an American hero, a trail blazer as a Black woman elected to the Texas legislature and then the first Black woman to be elected to Congress from the South. She taught us how to walk in and hold our heads up high.
As her pastor said at her funeral service:
"She taught us how to act at the table.
So we leave here today focused in our minds
That we can be the best we can be
Because she was the best she was."
Barbara Jordan had a moral compass and she was a person of impeccable character and integrity. She called us and our nation to our better angels.