Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas in 1972, Barbara Jordan became the first Black woman elected to congress, and re-elected, from the deep South.
Before her election to Congress, she was a Texas State Senator, the first Black woman to serve there. Jordan captured the attention of the nation during the 1974 Nixon impeachment hearings. As a member of the House Judiciary Hearings, she served on the committee charged with hearing and evaluating the evidence bearing on the possible impeachment of then-President Nixon. It was on this committee that her incisive questioning and her impassioned defense of the Constitution made her a respected national figure.
In l976, Barbara Jordan became the first woman and first Black American to give the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention.
In 1978 she announced that she would not seek re-election and returned to Texas as a full professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. She remained there and became a counselor to Texas Governor Ann Richards. Her many honors included the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
