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Zusatztext "This well-documented biography is a tribute to [Jordan] and a gift to those who honor the ideals for which she stood." -- Chicago Tribune "Splendid...an inspiring account of Barbara Jordan's remarkable life." -- The New York Times Book Review "[A] thoughtful biography of a one-of-a-kind twentieth-century figure." -- Booklist "The new Jordan biography-like its subject-commands respect." -- Austin American-Statesman "A reverent portrait that observes...the dignity! precision! oratorical gifts! discipline and self-sufficiency that defined Barbara Jordan." -- USA Today "[A] splendid new biography." -- San Antonio Express-News "Impressive...a major work...Jordan emerges from the page with an immediacy that leaves one with a new sense of loss over her death. " -- The Women's Review of Books Informationen zum Autor Mary Beth Rogers was previously the chief-of-staff for Texas Governor Ann Richards and a professor of American Politics at the Lyndon B. Johnson School for Public Affairs, where Barbara Jordan taught ethics. Mary Beth is now the CEO of KLRU-TV, the public television station in Austin. Klappentext Barbara Jordan was the first African American to serve in the Texas Senate since Reconstruction, the first black woman elected to Congress from the South, and the first to deliver the keynote address at a national party convention. Yet Jordan herself remained a mystery, a woman so private that even her close friends did not know the name of the illness that debilitated her for two decades until it struck her down at the age of fifty-nine. In Barbara Jordan , Mary Beth Rogers deftly explores the forces that shaped the moral character and quiet dignity of this extraordinary woman. She reveals the seeds of Jordan's trademark stoicism while recapturing the essence of a black woman entering politics just as the civil rights movement exploded across the nation. Celebrating Jordan's elegance, passion, and patriotism, this illuminating portrayal gives new depth to our understanding of one of the most influential women of our time-a woman whose powerful convictions and flair for oratorical drama changed the political landscape of America's twentieth century. Leseprobe Watergate We have to ask our heroes at the moment their challenge is thrust upon them, with its trials and the possibilities of greatness on the other side: Are you ready? Can you handle it? It was on July 25, 1974, that millions of television viewers saw Barbara Jordan for the first time. What they saw was a massive, heavy black woman, in a pumpkin-orange knit dress, with a black-and-white polka-dot scarf at her neck. She was such a large woman that there seemed nothing unusual about her round and puffy face, swollen from the prednisone. Pearl earrings were visible under her short, smooth hair, but she wore no makeup or lipstick, and her eyes were shielded by glasses in heavy black frames that reflected the television lights back into the cameras, making her eyes almost impossible to see. Her elbows were on the table, with her right hand holding the edge of her glasses. She leaned into the microphone and started to read her remarks. The magic of her voice began to obliterate her appearance. Its clear, rapid, bell-like tones and rhythmic patterns made most viewers pause. Within a mere fifteen seconds, no more than fifty words into her text, both the sound and the content of her words began to engage, even captivate, her audience. Earlier today we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States, "We, the People." It is a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the 17th of September in 1787, I was not included in that "We, the People." I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton must have l...
