by Nomad
Today, February 21, marks the birthday of Texas Congresswoman Barbara Charline Jordan, arguably one of the most influential black women in American political history.
Representative Jordan from Texas was the first in many categories: the first African American to serve in the Texas Senate since Reconstruction, the first black woman elected to Congress from the South. Additionally, in, July 1976, she became the first African American woman to deliver a keynote speech at a Democratic National Convention.
In fact, on an individual level, it's
hard to find, in one person of this period who symbolized the breadth of
American diversity. She was an African American, she was a woman and, although it
was an aspect of her life she preferred to remain undisclosed, she was most
likely a lesbian.
On that basis alone, she had a
right to speak on behalf of many people. She once said of the first words of the
preamble of the Constitution:
It is a very eloquent beginning. But when the document was completed on the seventeenth of September 1787 I was not included in that “We, the people.” I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision I have finally been included in “We, the people.”:
