Voice of Good Hope
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Much ink has been spilled chronicling Jordan’s life. Several biographies have been published as well as her own 1979 memoir, Barbara Jordan: A Self-Portrait. Her determined rise from obscurity in Houston’s impoverished fifth ward to national renown as one of the country’s most conspicuous, respected defenders of constitutional rights seems ready-made for sentimentalization. On the other hand, Jordan’s backroom politicking wouldn’t play well in soft focus. When she was elected as the first black woman to the Texas Senate in 1965, her first order of business was to ingratiate herself with her most conservative, racially intolerant colleagues–in other words, those with the most power. As a freshman she was negotiating with none other than Dorsey Hardeman, the powerful San Angelo senator who could tank multimillion-dollar appropriations “with a head shake or a pencil stroke,” as one Texas reporter put it. After learning of Jordan’s election to the senate, Hardeman reportedly said that he “wasn’t going to let no nigger woman” tell him what to do, yet within a few months of her arrival in Austin, Jordan was in his office sipping scotch and plotting to break a rival’s filibuster. As she said in a newspaper account, “To be effective I had to get inside the Club, not just inside the chamber.”
When Thatcher finally abandons the sentimental world of grandpa’s backyard and turns Jordan loose in the world of politics, her extraordinary skill as a playwright becomes clear. The remaining scenes are as rigorous, intelligent, and downright thrilling as anything written for the Chicago stage in recent memory. In the meticulously plotted second scene, Jordan is a U.S. congresswoman receiving a visit from Democratic National Chairman Robert Strauss. He asks her to testify as a character witness for former Texas governor John Connally, accused of corruption and obstruction of justice in the wake of Watergate. Connally had led the fight against integration in Jordan’s home state, and any support for him could destroy her credibility among her liberal constituents. Yet she might gain powerful friends by standing behind his cause.
