In the summer of 1974, I was glued to the television for most of the day. For the first time in my life, my parents didn’t insist that I shut it off, go outside—do something useful. That was Watergate Summer, the weeks that a national drama played out all day on public television, with coverage hosted by Robert McNeil and Jim Lehrer, and interspersed with experts who explained the ramifications of testimony by White House staff for President Richard M. Nixon’s possible impeachment.
Then, on July 25, a first-term Representative from Texas’s 11th Congressional District, a large African American woman with a commanding voice and demeanor, used her introductory 15 minutes to express her love for a Constitution that had also permitted and protected American slavery.
That woman was Barbara Jordan. I cried as I listened to her speech, not just because it was so beautifully written and delivered, but because it expressed the love I also felt for my country—for its history, and its laws—at a time when Nixon was being held to account for his crimes. Presidents weren’t above the law, Jordan argued. It was not just the right, but also the duty of the legislative and judicial branches to apply the checks and balances that the Founders intended—those same Founders who ensured that slavery endured for almost another century after the Constitution was adopted, and a legal, racial caste system for almost another century after that.
This is, of course, also the same Constitution and nation of laws that President Donald J. Trump, just elected to a second term, as well as the entire Republican Party, plans to wipe their collective asses with in the next four years.
And it is up to us to stop them.
This is why I wanted to bring Mary Ellen Curtin, associate professor of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies at American University, on the show. Curtin is the author of She Changed the Nation: Barbara Jordan’s Life and Legacy in Black Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024), a book I have been looking forward to reading since I heard that it was in the pipeline. As you can probably tell, Jordan is one of my heroes. Her service in Congress was short by any standards: only six years. But it was the penultimate stage of a career in which Jordan used every public platform she had, from childhood on, to make the promise of the Constitution real.
A slightly informal note: listeners may recall that the last episode featured David Greenberg’s biography of Congressman John R. Lewis. I had hoped that the Lewis episode and this one would bookend the election of our first woman president. As a precaution, Mary Ellen and I taped two endings. We had to use the wrong one.
But, although it is going to be a hard fight, as Barbara Jordan famously said on July 25, 1974, my faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I still believe in freedom.
And I believe in you.
Show notes:
- Mary Ellen cites a previous biography, Mary Beth Rogers’ Barbara Jordan: American Hero (Penguin Random House, 1998.)
- Mary Ellen mentions Leon Higgenbotham’s early impressions of Jordan: for those who do not know him, Higgenbotham (1928–1998) was a prominent jurist: you can read more about him here.
- Claire and Mary Ellen discuss the importance of excellent, if segregated, Black schools for boosting Black men and women into professional and leadership roles: for a case study on this topic, see Vanessa Siddle Walker, Hello Professor: A Black Principal and Professional Leadership in the Segregated South (University of North Carolina Press, 2009).
- One of the court decisions that paved the way for Jordan’s career was Smith v. Allright (1944), a Texas case organized by Jordan’s pastor and decided by the United States Supreme Court that abolished the white primary.
- Claire mentions Bella Abzug’s published diary of her first year in Congress, Bella! Ms. Abzug Goes to Washington (Saturday Review Press, 1972).
- If you want to read more about the famous “Class of 1974” that bolstered the progressives elected to the House of Representatives in 1972, check out Claire Potter and John Lawrence, “The Watergate Babies: What the Congressional Class of 1974 can teach us about political change,” Public Seminar, August 15, 2018.
- You can read more about the life that Barbara Jordan and Nancy Earl made together in Lisa Moore, “Looking Back at Barbara Jordan,” QT Voices (LGBT Studies, UT-Austin, July 7, 1972).
