American attorney, civil rights activist, self-made man and one of the key movers and shakers in Washington DC. Participating in the civil rights movement, Jordan escorted African-American student, Charlayne Hunter, later to become a PBS correspondent, through the hostile jeering crowd of white students at the newly desegregated University of Georgia in Atlanta in 1961. In 1962, he led a boycott against stores refusing to hire blacks. As head of the Urban League, 1972-1981, Jordan became a national figure fighting for funding the country’s inner cities and grew into an accomplished corporate politician. A friend of Bill Clinton since his days in the Urban League, he encouraged Clinton to run for president and played a key role in teaming Al Gore with Governor Clinton. In 1993, Jordan was sitting on 11 corporate boards earning a seven-figure salary as a corporate hired gun. In February 1999, Congressional lawyers used his deposition tapes to try to impeach President Bill Clinton before the U.S. Senate.
Jordan was the second of three sons of Vernon and Mary Belle (Griggs) Jordan of Atlanta, GA. He grew up from humble beginnings in the first public housing projects for blacks and attended segregated public schools in Atlanta. His dad was a postal worker and his mom operated a catering company during the Depression. When his mom catered Atlanta’s best weddings, cocktail parties and football games, Jordan and his brothers worked as waiters and bartenders for many of the genteel functions. As a kid in school, Jordan was used to a packed lunch of his mother’s paper thin sliced ham and cucumber sandwiches while other kids ate collard greens and chitlins.
The class orator in high school he became the first black student to attend DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana in 1953. He majored in political science and minored in history and speech and graduated with his B.A. in 1957. In Washington DC., he pursued his law degree from Howard University and graduated from the distinguished college in 1960. Jordan worked as clerk in the office of Atlanta civil rights attorney Donald Hollowell, earning $35 weekly. In 1964, he set up a law partnership in Arkansas with Wiley A. Barnton. He moved to New York City in 1970 and became the appointed executive director of the United Negro Fund.
On 3/11/1971, Whitney M. Young, Jr., the director of the National Urban League, drowned in Lagos, Nigeria. Two months later, Vernon Jordan at 35 was unanimously chosen to succeed Young assuming the post in January 1972. In a decade when corporations began to get wise to integrating their boards of directors, Jordan became a recognized leader in the black community. He was invited to join the boards of R.J. Reynolds, Xerox, American Express, J.C. Penny and Bankers Trust. As a fund-raiser, he doubled the operating budget of the Urban League. Dynamic and charming, Jordan was able to silence radical critics complaining that the lawyer was more concerned with the black middle-class at the expense of the poor.
His career with the Urban League ended after a near fatal shooting at a hotel by a sniper. On 5/29/1980 after 2:00 A.M. Jordan was driven back to the Marriott hotel in Fort Wayne, Indiana by a female Urban League volunteer when he was shot in a crime police have not been able to solve. Jordan spent 98 days in the hospital recovering from his gunshot wound, an inch from his spine. After the terrifying incident, he decided to leave his Urban League post and concentrate on his career as a corporate lawyer. Joining the law and lobbying firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, he became a Washington insider making friends with President George Bush. In 1992, Jordan was named by Bill Clinton to chair his presidential transition team before he took office in January 1993. A man who listens to the problems of the rich and powerful, Jordan brokered jobs for IBM chief Lou Gerstner and World Bank president James Wolfensohm. In 1998, Jordan became entangled in the Monica Lewinsky scandal with the Clinton White House. He denied giving legal counseling to Lewinsky about her relationship to Clinton but only helping the one-time White House intern find a job in New York.
Jordan married his first wife, Shirley M. Yarbrough, in 1959. They produced one daughter, Vickee in 1960. In 1965, Shirley was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and after two decades she died, 1985. In 1986, Jordan married Ann Dibble Cook, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago in the School of Social Work. She gave up her academic career to live with her husband in Washington DC. Like her husband, Ann sits on five corporate boards including Johnson & Johnson and Capital Cities/ABC, taking home around $202,600 to the family household. The couple live in a brick house overlooking Georgetown bought in 1986 for $550,000. The cars of choice for the Jordan family are Cadillac’s. Vernon prefers a red Allante convertible. He belongs to many of the established clubs in Washington and New York and is a trustee of the Brookings Institute and the Ford Foundation. A tennis player and avid golfer, Jordan has been pictured on the golf green with his buddy Bill Clinton.
At a young age, Jordan was fascinated with the decorum of Atlanta’s wealthy white lawyers. He made it a point to wear clothes like the smart set. In the 1970s, Jordan began to order his tailored shirts from Turnbull & Asser in London. He sports a regal presence in his conservative, sharp attire.
Link to Wikipedia biography