Vernon Can Read! By Vernon Jordan Jr. with Annette Gordon-Reed

(35. - 1107.) Vernon Can Read! By Vernon Jordan Jr. with Annette Gordon-Reed (2001) - In the summer of 1955 the 20 year old Jordan, a second year student at DePauw University, was employed as a chauffeur / butler by Robert F. Maddox, an 80 year old plus banking executive in Atlanta. He has a wonderful library. While Maddox is napping Jordan spends his afternoons reading there. One day Maddox rises earlier and finds Jordan reading. Startled, he advises his family that night that “Vernon can read”. Secure in the superiority of his race he “never thought about those who worked for him in any way that did not directly affect their duties to him”. It was a powerful illustration of what life was like for black Americans in the South of the 1955’s.

Jordan was never going to live the quiet life of his father, Vernon Jordan Sr. who was a good dependable man providing his sons with a stable home.

Jordan was infused with the spirit and drive of his mother, Mary. She moved from rural Georgia to Atlanta to work as a servant. She was not content with a simple life. She wanted a better life and established a successful catering business. She was equally ambitious for her sons.

In ways large and small she motivated Jordan. Her favored name for Jordan was “Man”:

This was her positive way to counteract what she knew would be the outside world’s - the white world’s - view of me even after I had officially passed into manhood.

Writing in 2001 Jordan is intent on providing his “very personal take on the black experience since the end of the Second World War” to the 1980’s. He modestly states:

I hope what follows will be instructive to readers today, and for anyone in the future who wants to know something of what these times were like, as well as the events that took us away from them”.

At 12 in 1947 he is sternly reminded of his place when he is advised a white boy, also 12, he had played with on trips to his rural relatives is now to be addressed as “Mr. Bobby”.

To Jordan perspectives on race are distorted “when class is taken out of the equation”. In addition to his mother’s influence, he believes growing up in a “lower-middle class family” made him a “striver”.

From the age of 5 he was always finding ways to make money including finding and selling golf balls, polishing brass door furnishings and having a newspaper route. Jordan embodied his mother’s hustle.

Writing of the social disadvantage of being a boy who was a good student sounded familiar. Other boys admire athletes, not scholars. Personally, there was some respect in high school but it was not until I reached university that being good at academics was valued.

His mother wrote to him every day at university. One of his “deepest regrets” is that he did not think at 18 to keep these notes and letters of her love and commitment to him.

At graduation from DePauw in 1957 official segregation dominates the South. Jordan, determined to change the system, goes to law school at one of America’s leading black education institutions, Howard University. He is intent upon becoming a civil rights lawyer.

Possibly the most important aspect of life at Howard was that there were girls around him he could date. At DePauw there was an unwritten, but rigid, code of no interracial dating.

After graduating from law school he went to work for an Atlanta lawyer, Donald Hollowell. In his first month he aided Hollowell in trying to save Nathaniel Johnson, a young black man, who had pled guilty to raping a white woman to avoid the death penalty. (He had a good defence though being found not guilty in Georgia of the late 1950’s was doubtful.) The plea did not save him from the death penalty. Taking over the case after state appeeals had failed the duo desperately file applications, appeal to government officials and petition the governor. All their efforts are brushed aside and Johnson is executed. Jordan is exhausted and devastated but he is in the office the next morning. Other clients need him. I am so familiar with being at the office the day after a grueling trial. Maybe a day off is possible but waiting cases demand attention.

After a year in the Hollowell office he moved into administrative positions starting as a field officer for the NAACP. Between an acknowledged innate restlessness, a powerful ambition to move up in the world and an intense desire to take advantage of opportunity for personal benefit and the Black community he took new positions frequently.

Befitting his designation as the “most connected man” in America he constantly met and established relationships with the elite of American life (white and black).

Often the first or second Black to hold a position he opened further opportunities for Black people. In particular, he led the way in working to integrate the Boards of Directors of America’s largest corporations. He saw that, for Black Americans, to fully advance in American society they needed to be directors of great companies.

He first became a corporate director when he was President of the National Urban League. Going to his first director’s meeting at the Celanese Corporation was an emotional experience. As a young man he had served, as part of his mother’s catering business, the wealthy businessman of Atlanta. Now he was a member of a much more powerful elite, the directors of Fortune 500 companies, based in New York City.

The writing is fluid and draws the reader into Jordan’s life. The stories are vivid and real. He follows my favourite approach to discussing issues. He provides examples rather than abstract principles. He was a great American who died earlier this year.