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Vernon Eulion Jordan Jr. (August 15, 1935 – March 1, 2021) was an American business executive and civil rights attorney who worked for various civil rights movement organizations before becoming a close advisor to President Bill Clinton.
Jordan grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and graduated in 1957 from DePauw University. In the early 1960s, he started his civil rights career, most notably being a part of a team of lawyers that desegregated the University of Georgia. He then continued to work for multiple civil rights organizations until the late 1980s. In the early 1990s, he became a close ally and friend of Bill Clinton and he served as part of Clinton's transition team. After Clinton's departure, Jordan began working with multiple corporations and investment banking firms up until his death. During the 2004 election, he worked for John Kerry's campaign.
Jordan grew up with his family in the racially segregated Southern United States. He was an honors graduate of David T. Howard High School. Rejected for a summer internship with an insurance company after his sophomore year in college because of his race, he earned money for college for a few summers by working as a chauffeur to former city mayor Robert Maddox, then a banker. Jordan graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, in 1957. In an oral history interview archived at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, an interview conducted in 1964 with Robert Penn Warren for the book Who Speaks for the Negro?, Jordan described his difficulties at DePauw as the only black student in a class of 400. He earned a Juris Doctor at Howard University School of Law in 1960. He was a member of the Omega Psi Phi and Sigma Pi Phi fraternities.
After leaving private law practice in the early 1960s, Jordan became directly involved in activism in the field, serving as the Georgia field director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. From the NAACP, he moved to the Southern Regional Council and then to the Voter Education Project.
In 1970, Jordan became executive director of the United Negro College Fund. An Historical Look At the Impact of the United Negro College Fund and its Member Institutions on American History, UNCF. He was president of the National Urban League from 1971 to 1981.
While still with the National Urban League, Jordan in 1981 said of the Ronald Reagan administration:
That year he resigned from the National Urban League to take a position as legal counsel with the Washington, D.C., office of the Dallas law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.
Then-president Jimmy Carter visited Jordan while he was recovering, an event that became the first story covered by the new network CNN.
Terrorist and Neo-Nazism Joseph Paul Franklin was charged with attempted murder but acquitted in 1982. However, in 1996, after being convicted of murder in another case, Franklin admitted to having committed the shooting.
In 1998 Jordan helped Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern, find a job after she left the White House, and recommended an attorney. His role was considered controversial given the scandal that the Clinton administration had suffered because of the president's involvement with the intern, and Jordan testified several times before the grand jury convened by independent counsel Kenneth Starr. On October 1, 2003, a United States court of appeals rejected Jordan's claim for reimbursement for legal services related to assisting Clinton in scandals regarding Lewinsky and Paula Jones. Jordan asked the government to pay him $302,719, but he was paid only $1,215. "Washington: Request For Legal Fees Rejected". The New York Times (October 1, 2003).
In 1998, Jordan was interviewed by CBS news television program 60 Minutes.
In the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, Jordan was one of three individuals (with Lewinsky and Sidney Blumenthal) of whom House impeachment managers recorded a deposition.
He was a member of the board of directors of Revlon, Sara Lee, Corning, Xerox, and RJR Nabisco during the 1989 leveraged buyout fight between RJR Nabisco CEO F. Ross Johnson and Henry Kravis and his company KKR. A close friend of Jordan's was the Xerox tycoon Charles Peter McColough, who persuaded Jordan to join the board of trustees at Xerox. McColough served as a mentor and friend of Jordan's until McColough's death.
In the 2004 presidential campaign, Jordan led debate preparation and negotiation efforts on behalf of John Kerry, the Democratic nominee for president. Vernon Jordan '57 Named John Kerry's Lead Debate Negotiator & Elected President of Economic Club of Washington, DePauw University News, June 28, 2004 That year he was elected president of The Economic Club of Washington, D.C.
In 2006, Jordan served as a member of the Iraq Study Group, which was formed to make recommendations on U.S. policy in Iraq. Iraq Study Group Members , United States Institute of Peace
In May 2017, Jordan served as the commencement speaker at the 163rd commencement of Syracuse University.
Jordan died at his home in Washington, D.C., on March 1, 2021, at the age of 85, and was buried in Washington, D.C.'s Oak Hill Cemetery.
In 1986 he remarried, to Ann Jordan and adopted her four children - Antoinette "Toni", Mercer, Janice and Jacqueline. He has nine grandchildren, seven from his second wife's children, Janice, Mercer, and Toni.
Jordan also served as the narrator for American composer Joseph Schwantner's New Morning for the World: "Daybreak of Freedom," a collection of quotations from various speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. "New Morning for the World", Joseph Schwantner Works List. Schwantner.net. Joseph Schwantner Discography. Schwantner.net.
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