Barbara Jordan
Barbara Jordan
Barbara Charline Jordanwas a lawyer, educator, an American politician, and a leader of the Civil Rights movement. A Democrat, she was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction, the first Southern African American female elected to the United States House of Representatives, the first known lesbian elected to the United States Congress, and the first African-American woman to deliver a keynote address at a Democratic National Convention. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth21 February 1936
CityHouston, TX
CountryUnited States of America
Barbara Jordan quotes about
Our concept of governing is derived from our view of people. It is a concept deeply rooted in a set of beliefs firmly etched in the national conscience, of all of us.
Throughout out history, when people have looked for new ways to solve their problems, and to uphold the principles of this nation, many times they have turned to political parties. They have often turned to the Democratic Party.
There is no executive order; there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community. This we must do as individuals and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision.
Fairness is an across-the-board requirement for all our interactions with each other ...Fairness treats everbody the same.
The stakes ... are too high for government to be a spectator sport.
Let's all understand that these guiding principles cannot be discarded for short-term political gains. They represent what this country is all about. They are indigenous to the American idea. And these are principles which are not negotiable.
[It is] one of the most complex and emotional issues of out time.
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.'
We have a positive vision of the future founded on the belief that the gap between the promise and reality of America can one day be finally closed. We believe that.
The majority of the American people still believe that every single individual in this country is entitled to just as much respect, just as much dignity, as every other individual.
We are a people in a quandary about the present. We are a people in search of our future. We are a people in search of a national community.
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.
My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminuation, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution. It is reason and not passion which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision.
The Supreme Court has always been the last bastion of the protection of our freedoms.