He has been called many things: A civil rights lawyer turned power broker, the “Rosa Parks of Wall Street,” the crossover artist who had the ear and hearts of some of the most powerful people in the world. Vernon Jordan, a trailblazing figure who could read, has died at age 85.
Jordan’s ability to read is the central element of his origin story — and the wink behind of the title of his excellent memoir. Jordan grew up in Atlanta’s University Homes housing project and as a college student, held a summer job as a driver and waiter for a wealthy retired banker. (His mother, a caterer at a local lawyer’s club and who knew what was what, had found him a series of service gigs.) The story hinges on Mr. Robert F. Maddux, who wandered into his own library one day, only to be shocked to find Jordan reading between driving assignments. “I’ve never had one of you work for me who could read,” Maddux said.
Jordan set the context in a 2001 PBS News Hour interview:
“And then he asked – and it defines him in many ways, and defines the southern aristocracy of that time – he said, ‘Are you going to be a teacher or a preacher?’ As if, if you were learned and black, that was your limitation. And I said, ‘No, Mr. Maddux, I’m going to be a lawyer.’ Later on at dinner, I’m serving dinner to he and his family, and he announced, he said, ‘Vernon can read.’ And that’s the title of my memoir.“
But it was Jordan’s deep understanding of this “southern aristocracy” that lead him to the law, the best tool for dismantling hierarchy and delivering justice available to him. Before he became a white shoe lawyer, he was a foot soldier: Georgia field director for the NAACP; Director of the Voter Education Project; head of the United Negro College Fund; and President of the National Urban League. He worked for it.
I’m sure he would tell us that we shouldn’t be surprised that everyone needs to work for it now.
Jordan begins this 2017 essay, an adaptation from his remarks after winning an award from the Harvard Law Center, with a memory from his youth in Atlanta. (Click through for a fantastic photo of a young Thurgood Marshall that will make your day.)
But his remarks served as a pointed reminder that the Trump administration’s segregationist impulses — to vilify immigrants, as one example — should be familiar.
At times like these, we need to be reminded of that journey, because, though so much of what we are experiencing today is “not normal,” it is also not new. Our situation may feel unprecedented and our course may feel uncharted, but we have been here before. I am reminded of my earliest exposure to American politics, growing up in Atlanta. In the early 1940s, there was a gubernatorial race in Georgia, where Eugene Talmadge, the governor at the time, was running for reelection. I recall sitting in our apartment in the first public-housing project built for black people in America, and Governor Talmadge coming on WSB radio, describing the two planks of his platform, which, as I recall them, were “niggers” and “roads.” As I recall, he was against the first and for the second.
This is essentially what President Trump is saying now—except that his two planks are immigrants and jobs. He’s against the first, and claims to be for the second. The words may change, but the policy remains the same. We have been here before.
The early leaders of the civil rights movement comprised an institutional memory that we must preserve. Along with Jordan, we’ve recently lost John Lewis, Rev. Cordy Tindell “C.T.” Vivian, Bruce Boynton — and many more, particularly women, whose names we don’t know.
And particularly now, as the current crop of voting-rights advocates face another test.
The battle for the ballot box has begun, with several Republican-controlled state governments issuing restrictive measures designed to curtail Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and likely-Democratic voters, all of which have alarmed civil-rights advocates. “This is a huge moment,” Derrick Johnson, the president and CEO of the NAACP, told The Atlantic. “This harkens to pre-segregation times in the South, and it goes to the core question of how we define citizenship and whether or not all citizens actually will have access to fully engage and participate.”
I strongly suggest you read and share Ronald Brownstein’s comprehensive reporting on the legislation in question, designed to eliminate early voting, curtail mail-in options, depress voter-registration efforts, and enforce new identification requirements. The countermeasure could be legislation calling for national election standards and a restored Voting Rights Act if they can be passed.
While you’re keeping an eye on the prize and the rights of others, I’ll leave you with some sage advice from Jordan’s 2017 piece. First, you can’t make lasting change without addressing the public policies under which people live. And for that, you’ll likely need a good lawyer:
[O]ur journey also teaches us that endurance is not enough We do not sing ‘We shall endure.’ We sing ‘We shall overcome.’ I am of the belief that in order to change a nation you must of course change hearts and minds, but you must also change the laws.
The laws that defined and circumscribed life in the Jim Crow South were warped, but it was also the law—farsighted, fair-minded jurisprudence—that gave us the tools to dismantle segregation, piece by rotten piece.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
On Background
The National Institute of Justice has a diversity problem, which means so do we This lengthy paper published in 2018 makes an unusual business case for diversity in STEM: A lack of diversity among forensic scientists means a less effective criminal justice system. The NIJ goes into great detail into how they’re hoping to attract a diverse pool into the profession, including partnering with HBCUs and recruiting talent of color from professional groups like the Consortium of Social Science Associations, the National Society of Black Engineers, the National Organization of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers, and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society. Unfortunately, their groundbreaking Graduate Research Fellowship Program, which supports innovative criminal justice-related research, has not been funded for 2021.
National Institute of Justice
Put some respect on Rosa Parks’ name In September, 1944, a young mother named Recy Taylor was abducted while walking home from a church revival in rural Abbeville, Alabama. A sedan filled with seven white men. A horrifying drive to a secluded pine grove. A brutal gang-rape. Taylor was told they’d return and do worse if she told anyone. First, she told her father. Then she told everyone. Her case went to a grand jury twice, but when charges were never filed, the NAACP office in Montgomery sent their best investigator out to find out why. Her name was Rosa Parks. Long before she was famous for her role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Parks was a trained activist, investigator, and leader of a national campaign to stop sexual assaults against black women, which was a persistent experience in the violent Jim Crow South.
The Root
That time when we started brawling about politics on television If you want to understand what started the nasty, counterpunching debate dynamic that is now commonplace on the evening news and the internet, you’ll need to go back to 1968, when cash-strapped ABC, then stuck in third place, hired conservative William F. Buckley, Jr. and the liberal Gore Vidal to participate in ten debates on nightly television. Best of Enemies is a truly astonishing documentary about the debates, and reveals the actual moment when civility went out the window and television vitriol in service of deeply rooted ideological views became good business. Best of Enemies
raceAhead is edited by David Z. Morris
Today's mood board
Is there any more appropriate moment to appreciate Meghan Markle, the trailblazing Duchess of Sussex, than as the British press renews its racist vilification of her? We think not.
