She Changed the Nation, page 24
The happiness and support she experienced in her private life in Austin surely helped Jordan withstand the pressures of the job. And her work in planning and attending the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, for example, demonstrates her deep involvement in national efforts among Black politicians and activists to form a coherent agenda to benefit Black America. She most likely did not discuss those efforts, or many of her true feelings about race, with her Texas colleagues. Furthermore, as Molly Ivins’s columns suggest, some white liberals in Austin simply could not get comfortable in her presence or understand her approach. Yet her Houston constituents continued their support. Jordan’s newsletters spelled out her positions minutely, and Black voters in Houston, unaware of her personal relationships or struggles with racism, remained loyal. That loyalty would be tested in 1972, when Barbara Jordan decided to run for Congress.
As in her 1966 race for the Texas Senate, redistricting opened the door to a new opportunity. Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes appointed Jordan vice-chair of the Senate redistricting panel, and she played a major role in drawing the boundaries of the new Eighteenth Congressional House district; Black voters made up about 50 percent of the population, and white and Latino residents roughly comprised the other half.97 The new district was designed to favor a liberal Black candidate, and Jordan was assumed to be one who would win it. But once again she faced an unexpected liberal challenger. This time it would be Black representative Curtis Graves.
CHAPTER 8
Collision Course
Jordan Versus Graves
If there’s a collision course between Mr. Graves and me, I shall not defer. I shall not defer to him or anyone else if I think I can win.
—Barbara Jordan, 1968
In the summer of 1971, seventy years after the last Black representative from the South left Congress, Barbara Jordan began work on her congressional campaign, confident that she had the support of Black Houston. Vox pop interviewees in the Forward Times reflected enthusiasm for the Black woman candidate. “An Ode to Black Womanhood” praised Jordan for her outspoken leadership: “Senator Jordan means much to Blacks—men and women alike—for there are many who will rally to her and applaud her black consciousness.” Said one interviewee: “With her articulate debating style, she has pulverized political opponents in a matter of minutes.” “We need more Barbara Jordans,” stated a woman who was waiting for the bus. “We can win our freedom if we get the representation to demand what we want. She’s not the type of person to beg for rights of the people. She knows the law and uses that to fight them racists with.”1 Although the article assumed she would win with ease, she remained cautious. “I try not to get too excited,” Jordan told a reporter from the New York Times. “No one else has announced, but I can anticipate some kind of competition in the Democratic party.”2
Jordan was right. On August 21, 1971, Curtis Graves, a Houston state legislator, created a stir by announcing his candidacy for the coveted seat. “Black on Black for U.S. Congress,” announced the Forward Times.3 Graves came out swinging, attacking Jordan for her “blind loyalty to the Democratic Party Machine.” Jordan was a “tool” for big-name Texas politicians, Graves said; she was too compromising.
For the next nine months, until the primary election in May 1972, the Jordan-Graves rivalry took center stage in Black Houston. Both were ambitious politicians, but this race was not merely a battle of the sexes, or primarily a debate about moderation or militancy. In this contest Graves took Jordan’s Black womanhood, an identity that Black Houstonians appreciated, and turned it against her. He alleged that Jordan had sold out to white men. Not only did he challenge her integrity, he questioned her respectability by making insinuations about her sexuality. Jordan won the primary handily, demonstrating her superior grassroots support and organizational strength. Nevertheless, this bitter race produced great enmity and caused a longstanding rift that was never resolved between Jordan and her opponent’s Houston backers, both Black and white.
Graves and Jordan had not always been political rivals. A native of New Orleans, Graves grew up in a middle-class family and came to Houston to attend Texas Southern. He participated in the 1960 student sit-ins and joined the Progressive Youth Association (PYA). After graduation, he took a job with a Black-owned bank and built up a favorable reputation in the local community. When redistricting created additional seats in the Texas legislature for Houston in 1966, he ran with the support of the Harris County Democrats, and he won. In the same year that Jordan was elected to the senate, Graves and Lauro Cruz became the only African American and Mexican American representatives in the entire Texas House of Representatives, a body of 150 members with only a handful of liberals.4
Jordan and Graves each possessed a distinctive personality, but their contrasting approaches to governance can largely be explained by the structure and size of their respective legislative bodies. With few allies in the house, Graves had a slim to none chance of passing legislation, so he used the press and his flamboyant personality to bring racial injustice into public view. He criticized the lack of Black and Latino representation on draft boards and deplored the negative portrayals of Black history in Texas school textbooks.5 When refused admittance to one of Austin’s exclusive clubs, Graves complained publicly, prompting even the Houston Chronicle to urge the club to mend its ways: “Wake up! This is 1967!”6 He asked for hearings on police brutality, attacked the power of lobbyists, opposed Medicaid cuts for welfare recipients, spoke out against the Vietnam War, and opposed cutting off student loans.7 Using the forum of the legislature, Graves held unofficial hearings, paid for by himself, to investigate the use of tear gas at Gatesville and Mountainview state schools for boys as well as several suspicious deaths that had occurred in those institutions.8 To protest the “food tax,” he stood on a table in the legislature. Ben Barnes thought Graves mentally unstable—he “wasn’t firing on all eight cylinders.”9 The liberal Texas Observer thought him “too emotional to be effective.” Yet Sissy Farenthold, the only woman in the house and the emerging leader of the house liberals, considered him “courageous.”10
Graves enjoyed widespread support in Black Houston; however, in 1969 he stumbled. Graves challenged Houston mayor Louis Welch, but instead of making Black empowerment and police brutality the major issues in the campaign, he eschewed issues of race.11 Graves pronounced the need for law and order and expounded on Houston’s water problems. The Texas Observer thought it a “timid” campaign for a crusader like Graves. The paper “fear[ed] that by running a middle of the road campaign,” he was “creating apathy and lethargy in the black community.” Jordan agreed, stating, “There is not much work going on in the black precincts. That’s what’s worrying me.”12 Still, she supported Graves and spoke for him at an outdoor rally in Hermann Park.13 When the vulnerable Welch cruised to an easy victory, critics cited Graves’s lack of outreach to labor and his deficient organization.14 Nevertheless, Graves received a significant number of Black votes, and shortly after his loss, speculation started about whether he would run in a new congressional district. When Jordan was asked if she saw Graves as a rival for the Democratic nomination, she replied with candor: “If there’s a collision course between Mr. Graves and me, I shall not defer. I shall not defer to him or anyone else if I think I can win.”15 The primary system almost ensured that the two talented Black politicians would oppose each other.
Black voters now faced a race that pitted Black contenders against each other, making personalities, rather than issues, central to the race. Astute Black Houstonians wondered why on earth Graves challenged Jordan.16 Judson Robinson, who would become the first African American to serve on the Houston City Council, expressed his disappointment: “This created division in our ranks when unity is what we need.” A TSU student agreed: “Of course a lot of smear will come out in the campaign. It doesn’t make sense for us to destroy each other.”17 Pluria Marshall, director of Operation Breadbasket in Houston, considered Graves’s campaign a fool’s errand. “Curtis Graves is committing political suicide,” he flatly stated. Marshall noted that Jordan had the “solid support of the black precinct judges . . . [and] has the support of the churches.” People liked Graves, but they simply deemed Jordan a better leader, with a larger and more committed voter base. As Marshall pointed out, “She has been to so many people what she needed to be–an image to identify with.”18 No one thought Graves had a chance.
At first Jordan’s campaign took the high ground, depicting her candidacy as a new start for Texas. At the beginning of October 1971, some of the wealthiest and most influential people in Texas paid tribute to the senator at a fundraiser and appreciation dinner at the Rice Hotel. Attendees included Frank Erwin, the head of the University of Texas; Mayor Louis Welch of Houston; Ben Barnes, the lieutenant governor; John T. Jones, editor of the Houston Chronicle; and former president Lyndon Johnson, who spoke of Jordan as the future of the party. The Rice Hotel rarely held integrated events, and the gathering was perceived as a turning point in the city’s racial politics. The Forward Times called the fundraiser, where a “former president was in attendance at a reception which honored a black woman,” a “history making occasion.” Jordan enjoyed the support of the white establishment, and their praise of her delighted many Black Houstonians. The event seemed to stamp the winner label on her.19
But an October surprise upended the expected. Later that month, the senate completed its redistricting work for the Texas legislature, and to much amazement, Barbara Jordan’s Eleventh District senate seat had been dismantled. It had never been a Black majority district, but its core of Black and white working-class voters had been enough to elect Jordan. The new lines, however, placed wealthy white voters alongside very poor Black residents. When this new plan became known, Curtis Graves and Dr. Marion Ford, a Black dentist who wanted to run for Jordan’s old senate seat, raised the alarm. “I was flabbergasted at the new lines,” Ford complained. “It’s killing all the blacks and it’s killing me.”20 He urged Jordan to stay in the senate and not to run for Congress. Who was the man held responsible? Jordan’s friend Ben Barnes. “Ben Barnes engineered all this horseshoe gerrymandering,” Ford alleged. “He has dealt blacks of this county a low blow.” Graves went a step further, charging that Jordan had known about the plan all along: “That woman sold her seat in the Senate and with all this gerrymandering going on she hasn’t spoken up.”21 Black Houston had seen Jordan explain various issues on television, appear in the media alongside a former president, and speak in their communities from podiums and stages. Pejoratively referring to Jordan as “that woman” rather than as a senator, or even using a title with her name, was a calculated insult.
Figure 6. Barbara Jordan and former president Lyndon B. Johnson. MSS 0080 PH006, Houston Public Library, African American History Research Center, Houston, TX.
In previous campaigns Jordan’s womanhood had been her strength. But now Graves alleged that Jordan’s sex showed her proclivity to align with whites rather than with her own race: “She traded your senate seat for her own seat in Congress. Redistricting was an attempt to cut down any Black man from ever having power.” Graves’s attacks contained sexual innuendo. He compared her close working relationship with white male senators to sexual relations: “I say that the white man has used our women too long. . . . Now they are using them in Congress.”22 It was not clear if Graves was alluding to sexual violence in slavery or whether he was accusing Jordan of being the equivalent of what Malcolm X called the “house Negro.” Either way, it was a jarring characterization of a woman candidate whom Black voters knew and admired.
Black women took offense when Graves used demeaning racist stereotypes. Labor leader Don Horn averred that Graves ran a “scurrilous kind of campaign.” He recalled that Graves “accused her of being an Aunt Jemima, [and] an Uncle Tom.” Graves called his opponent a “sell out,” and claimed that she “had no personal convictions.” He also alleged that Jordan “hadn’t done anything for civil rights.” For women who had worked for years as Jordan’s block workers, these accusations must have felt personal.23 Tensions between the two candidates sometimes emerged at public events. Graves continued to attack her, but Jordan always kept calm.
Yet his attacks gave others the courage to voice their criticisms of the senator. Jordan had served on a senate committee investigating a student protest at Prairie View, a Black state college located in rural East Texas, Waller County. More than a thousand students marched peacefully to the home of the institution’s president to deliver a list of demands: better food, improved facilities, and an end to autocratic administration and outmoded disciplinary measures, such as curfews. The situation quickly degenerated into what one report called “scattered” but “significant” destruction of property, including the burning of a security car, the looting of a student bookstore, and broken windows. Two students not directly involved in the violence were arrested, charged with inciting to riot, and jailed on $100,000 bond. The student body president was expelled.24 The conflict at Prairie View was nothing like the violence at Texas Southern in 1967, but it demonstrated the ongoing crisis in Black higher education. In the end the senate recommended “catch-up” appropriations totaling more than four million dollars over the next two years.25 However, the committee did not comment on the allegations of corruption in the university administration or condemn the way the students had been treated. Jordan served on that committee. When Houston students heard about the timidity of the report, they responded with “seething rage.”26
When Jordan went to speak at the University of Houston, the anger of three hundred students erupted. “UH Student Voters Assail Senator Jordan’s Political Practices,” read a Forward Times headline.27 One Prairie View student told Jordan, “I am disappointed in you. Whenever it comes to doing things for black people you have equivocated.”28 Jordan agreed the senate’s response to Prairie View had been “feeble” but pointed out that the school had gained increased funding. She reminded the students of the importance of working within the system to make gains. Racism was the “cancer of the nation,” she admitted, and she invoked the term “apartheid.” As for the Texas Democratic party, she did not apologize for her loyalty, insisting that it was the “best vehicle for bringing about change for the poor.” The “time was not right” for an independent political party. She cited the candidacy of Shirley Chisholm for president: “As Shirley Chisholm has said, we can win elections by coalition politics.” Jordan was consistent in her answers and remained calm. “Some of the angry students who entered with a profound dislike for the Senator left questioning themselves,” the Forward Times reported. But others remained unpersuaded, with one stating that Graves “knows what it is to be black,” adding that “Miss Jordan needs to stay where she is and try to get herself straightened out.”29 Jordan knew her candidacy faced trouble.
Graves kept the issue of senate redistricting in the news and challenged the new plan in federal court. His suit, Graves v. Barnes, claimed that the new lines for the Eleventh District of the Texas Senate violated the “community of interest” standard in the Voting Rights Act. In her deposition Jordan agreed. “In the old 11th district,” she testified, “the white voters were primarily blue-collar workers, populist-type people on the low side of the middle income.” In the new district, however, the white voters “are persons who are on the upper side of the middle income, more white collar than blue collar workers.” In the old Eleventh District, white and Black residents shared “a community interest,” Jordan stated. But in the new district, “that community of interest, that has been violated.”30 Jordan denied that she had any role in the redistricting process. She deemed it highly unlikely a Black candidate could now win her seat. However, she refused to concede that if she chose to run, she could not be elected.31 To many this denial signaled Jordan’s acquiescence with what had happened. She seemed to be ducking the issue of whether Black voters had lost representation. Yet she condemned the outcome both in the press and in her deposition: “I have absolutely nothing to do with Senate redistricting and if any charges are being leveled at Ben Barnes, then Ben Barnes will have to answer them for himself. I will not be his defender.”32
Here was another opportunity for Graves to tie Jordan to Barnes. Barnes understood the growing power of the Black vote and sought Jordan’s endorsement in his race for governor, but she shied away. The redistricting battle hurt Barnes, but so did a financial scandal that involved an alleged deal between banker Frank Sharp and House Speaker Gus Mutscher. In exchange for a loan, Mutscher engineered an exclusion of Sharp’s Texas banks from FDIC oversight. When it came out that the speaker had earned more than $70,000 in the stock market, and that Barnes had also received loans from Sharp, their activities drew calls for an investigation into the “Sharpstown” scandal. A minority of house members called the “dirty thirty,” led by Sissy Farenthold, a liberal Democrat from Corpus Christie, kept the scandal in the news. It tarnished Barnes, and by association threatened Jordan. Not only had Jordan colluded to gain a seat in Congress, Graves alleged, she had also turned a blind eye to a corrupt deal. Jordan, he said, is “allied to corrupt politicians who have brought our state into national shame and ridicule.”33
“White money” in Jordan’s coffers now became an issue. Throughout the campaign, Graves maintained a close relationship with the Harris County Democrats, and he also had close ties with its white politicians. But he asserted that Jordan was “being financed by white Houstonians” who had no concern for the Black community, or sometimes just “white money.”34 White liberals had always helped to fund the few Black candidates who ever ran for office, including Graves. But as with the redistricting allegations, Graves had a point. Jordan’s campaign drew from a wide range of sources, but the Rice Hotel fundraiser garnered sizeable donations from wealthy Houstonians, and that could not be denied. Nevertheless, his lack of mass support showed in Graves’s fundraising. He depended most heavily on Black professionals—doctors, lawyers, and dentists—for his contributions. In contrast Jordan also drew from organized labor and ordinary people. She received hundreds of small donations, and she regularly attended fundraising dinners in the Fifth Ward on Lyons Avenue that charged five dollars or less. She outraised Graves by a ratio of 5 to 1.35 But the charge of a Black woman taking “white money” added to allegations about Jordan’s racial inconstancy.
