She Changed the Nation by Mary Ellen Curtin

Author:Mary Ellen Curtin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781512825817
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.

Figure 10. Barbara Jordan and Charles B. Rangel, House Judiciary Committee during the Nixon-Watergate impeachment hearings. Associated Press, July 26, 1974. Barbara C. Jordan Archives, Texas Southern University, Houston, TX.

Jordan herself became the lead story. When the committee adjourned at 11 PM that evening, she walked outside and faced a crowd of journalists and supporters. She did not know that CBS news reporter Bruce Morton had proclaimed her “the best mind on the committee” or that the Washington Post had called to ask for a copy of her speech—which did not exist. Her staff prepared a transcript and the Post published it on Saturday. The speech struck such a chord with the public that a deluge of letters and telegrams poured into her office. One letter to the Houston Post described how listening to the speech provoked the white author’s racial catharis: “I am embarrassed to tell you my first thoughts: Hanky head, Aunt Jemima. Minutes later I sat in cold chills as attorney Jordan went to cases and used the Constitution point by point to prove President Nixon’s impeachable violations of that Constitution.” One Houston supporter put up twenty-five billboards with huge letters that said, “Thank you—Barbara Jordan—for explaining our Constitution.”66

But her work on the committee was still not over. During the next few days, members debated the wording of the articles of impeachment. Rodino asked Jordan to address the charge that the president was still being denied due process. During the next televised evening session, she spoke again, clearly explaining to the public how the committee had accommodated the president and his attorneys. Rodino trusted her to be “concise and precise, but not aggressive,” and she was.67 The committee wrote up its charges. On Saturday, July 27, the committee voted twenty-seven to eleven in favor of the first article of impeachment. Over the next few days, two more articles followed. If the full House of Representatives had been given the opportunity to vote for impeachment and had a trial had been conducted in the Senate, Jordan would have been one of the five House members to serve as a prosecutor. But that day did not come. On August 5, one of the remaining White House tapes revealed Nixon’s guilt in an unambiguous fashion. On August 8, bowing to pressure from his family and remaining supporters, he resigned his office.68

In spite of their differences, the two parties had worked together. In the end, the undecideds could not hold out against the facts, and several Republicans and conservative Democrats voted for impeachment. Rodino, and the country, got a bipartisan process and vote. Something similar seemed to be happening in the entire House. Jordan would not predict the final outcome of the House vote, but did say to the press, “I have noticed, however, that persons who were firmly in the anti-impeachment camp now seem to have shifted to undecided.”69 To the end, as was her habit in the Texas Senate, Jordan kept her committee vote close to her chest. On

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