President Gerald Ford and Representative Barbara Jordan at Signing Ceremony
8/6/1975
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This photograph shows Representative Barbara Jordan of Texas with President Gerald Ford as he signs an extension for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Barbara Jordan (1936-1996) was a lawyer, teacher, civil rights leader, lawmaker, and first LGBTQ+ woman in Congress. Born in Houston, in Texas’s historically Black Fifth Ward, Jordan was the great-granddaughter of Edward Patton, one of the last African Americans to serve in the Texas House of Representatives before Jim Crow re-disenfranchised African American Texans in the 1880s.
In 1966 Jordan was elected as the first African American senator in the Texas Senate since the end of Reconstruction in 1883. In 1972 she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first woman elected in her own right to represent Texas in the House. Jordan had a successful career in Congress.
She had a knack for deal-making and used the good will she cultivated to extend the minimum wage to cover nonunionized farmworkers and domestic workers.
Barbara Jordan (1936-1996) was a lawyer, teacher, civil rights leader, lawmaker, and first LGBTQ+ woman in Congress. Born in Houston, in Texas’s historically Black Fifth Ward, Jordan was the great-granddaughter of Edward Patton, one of the last African Americans to serve in the Texas House of Representatives before Jim Crow re-disenfranchised African American Texans in the 1880s.
In 1966 Jordan was elected as the first African American senator in the Texas Senate since the end of Reconstruction in 1883. In 1972 she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first woman elected in her own right to represent Texas in the House. Jordan had a successful career in Congress.
She had a knack for deal-making and used the good will she cultivated to extend the minimum wage to cover nonunionized farmworkers and domestic workers.
This primary source comes from the Collection GRF-WHPO: White House Photographic Office Collection (Ford Administration).
National Archives Identifier: 23898509
Full Citation: President Gerald R. Ford and Representative Barbara Jordan of Texas at the Signing Ceremony for H.R. 6219, Extending the Voting Rights Act of 1965; 8/6/1975; Gerald R. Ford White House Photographs, 8/9/1974 - 1/20/1977; Collection GRF-WHPO: White House Photographic Office Collection (Ford Administration); Gerald R. Ford Library, Ann Arbor, MI. [Online Version, https://docsteach.org/documents/document/president-gerald-ford-and-representative-barbara-jordan-at-signing-ceremony, January 23, 2025]Rights: Public Domain, Free of Known Copyright Restrictions. Learn more on our privacy and legal page.
