12 A Freshman No More
The price of being well-known for getting things done is being given more to do. Barbara Jordan knew that only too well. The more she had accomplished in the Texas Senate, the more committee assignments she had been given. Now the same thing was happening in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In December 1974, new committee assignments were announced. In addition to serving on the House Judiciary Committee in the new 94th Congress, she would also be on the Government Operations Committee. This appointment pleased her, as the G.O.C. had been her second choice after the Judiciary Committee. She was also appointed to a ten-person Democratic task force assigned to draft an “action agenda” for House Democrats to pursue in the new Congress. Then, too, she would be serving on the Democratic Compliance Review Commission, whose responsibility was to enforce the party’s antidiscrimination rules and to assure full participation of all groups in party affairs. And she was appointed by Speaker Carl Albert to be one of the three “at large members” of the new Steering and Policy Committee of the House Democratic Caucus, the first Black woman to serve on the increasingly influential committee that had taken over the responsibility, formerly held by the House Ways and Means Committee, of appointing Democratic members to the standing committees of the House.
“You should see how everybody, including the old rednecks who’ve been running things in Washington for decades, are now bowing and scraping to Barbara, since she’s one of those with the power to shuffle all those committee members and even help chairmen keep their jobs,” said one of her Black colleagues in the House.
Clearly, she was rising in power and influence in Congress almost as quickly as she had in the Texas Senate. It took time and work, but she was willing to give them. Thus when, a few days after the opening of the 94th Congress, she learned that the Houston police department had a secret dossier on her, her first reaction was to wonder how law enforcement officials had so much time that they could “intrude on the lives of public officials.”
She was not the only prominent Houstonian on whom such a dossier had been kept. Others included the new mayor of Houston, Fred Hofheinz; fellow Congressman Bob Casey; several lawyers; a former member of the school board; prominent businessmen; and well-known fighters for civil liberties and the rights of the Black community.
Barbara was not personally disturbed about her file. The idea that Houston police had wasted the time and effort to compile the dossier caused her to chuckle. But she was disturbed by this additional example of government disregard of individuals’ right to privacy. “It is time, in my judgment, for the American government—state, local, and national—to get its own house in order and recognize that the civil liberties of the citizenry are to be protected at any cost,” she said. Privately, she wondered how in the world that could be done. The whole concept of civil liberties had been seriously eroded; disregard for them had spread like a cancer through all levels of government. She believed that the cure would have to begin with the highest levels, and she just did not feel the Republican administration was capable of policing itself. A real housecleaning was needed, and only an entirely new—in this case, Democratic—administration could do it.
Ironically, a month after the disclosure that Houston police had kept a file on her, Barbara Jordan received one of the highest honors the Texas Senate had ever given one of its former members. A specially commissioned portrait of her was unveiled, to be hung permanently beside portraits of Lyndon B. Johnson, the early state heroes, and of all people, Jefferson Davis, president of the old Confederacy.
Her former colleague in the Senate Chet Brooks said it was a shame Barbara’s voice couldn’t be captured in the portrait. “I may not talk openly from that portrait,” she responded, “but when it stands there next to all of the august people we have ensconced on the walls of this chamber, it’s going to talk.”
To the large, mostly Black audience who had come to witness the unveiling, she suggested, “Maybe you’re here because you want to affirm the fact that in order for a portrait to hang on the walls of this chamber you do not need to be a former president of the United States or a warrior at the Alamo. You can be something else. You can be a person.”
The majority of her audience knew exactly what she meant. She was referring to the fact that Blacks traditionally had not been considered persons, in the full sense of the word, in America; and that even then, in the year 1975, there were whites who would deny “personhood” to Blacks and other racial minorities. She returned to Washington to continue her efforts to gain real “personhood” for those to whom it was still denied.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act was scheduled to expire in August, and Peter Rodino had introduced a bill that would simply extend it for another ten years. Barbara felt it should be broadened. The act had been designed originally to end voting discrimination against Blacks in the South. It did not include southwestern states such as Texas, where a number of voting procedures that Barbara considered discriminatory continued. And it did not include racial or ethnic minorities other than Blacks. Barbara introduced a bill that would extend the act to any area where less than 50 percent of eligible voters had registered in the 1972 presidential election and where printed election or registration materials were written only in English when more than 5 percent of the eligible voters had a mother tongue other than English. Under her bill, the act would be broadened to include not only parts of the Southwest but also parts of the Northeast, and not only Hispanic Americans but also French and German Americans. Two other Democratic representatives, Herman Badillo of New York and Edward Roybal of California, were sponsoring their own bills to broaden the 1965 Civil Rights Act. They differed from Barbara’s mainly in their inclusion of parts of southern California and in not including any northeastern areas.
Immediately, many Texas officials protested. Conservatives of both parties were against what they saw as further federal intrusion into state affairs. Even some liberals felt that Texas was protecting its minority voters through state-imposed measures, without the need for federal intervention. One of those who felt that way was Democrat Jack Brooks, the other Texan on the House Judiciary Committee and a long-time proponent of civil rights measures.
Civil rights groups were also up in arms about the proposed changes in the act. Broadening it would weaken it, they charged. Or worse, the proposed changes might hinder extension of the bill in any form. They had an “understanding” with President Ford that he would support extension of the bill and they didn’t want it threatened. The Black Congressional Caucus had included extension of the act to cover Spanish-speaking peoples among its announced legislative goals, but Barbara was the only one who was putting herself in the forefront of the controversy by introducing a bill for such inclusion.
Barbara was not being looked upon with much favor by Black groups in March 1975. Earlier in the month, she had resigned her seat on the Democratic Compliance Review Commission. She had been criticized for poor performance on the twenty-five-member body, which included six Blacks. She had missed an important meeting on the party’s affirmative action regulations, she had been late for a second meeting, and she had left before the final crucial vote that prevented the party’s affirmative action policies from being extended to local units. Critics had charged that her close ties to white Texas Democrats, plus her ambitions for higher political office, were responsible for her poor performance. Barbara gave other reasons. Why did she leave the second meeting early? “The bickering became so enormous.” At the beginning of March she said, “I am now reconsidering whether I should remain a member. I have to decide whether I have the time to spend on it.” A week later she resigned, as did Deborah Renterria of Arizona. Barbara’s resignation did not increase her stature in the eyes of the civil rights groups who opposed any broadening of the provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. She was not, in their opinion, doing a very good job representing the interests of Black people.
In this particular case, it must be acknowledged that Barbara’s critics had some grounds for complaint. Her performance on the Democratic Compliance Review Commission was a blot on her otherwise clean attendance record and commitment to duty. Certainly, bickering is an irritating waste of time and Barbara was not the sort of person to endure it for very long. Still, missing that important vote was inexcusable. Perhaps she would have been better advised to resign earlier if she did not feel she could contribute sufficient time to the commission.
As to the criticism that her voting rights bill showed that she was not doing a good job representing the interests of Black people, it is in the main unfair. Barbara had never promised to represent Black people exclusively. She had promised to represent the people of her district and people all over the United States who had no voice in the decision-making processes that affect them. She intended to do just that. Realizing that the competing bills that she, Badillo, and Roybal had introduced could weaken the final goal at which all three aimed, she considered combining her bill with one of theirs. Renewal of the Voting Rights Act was being considered by a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. Barbara was not on that subcommittee, but Herman Badillo was. Barbara and Badillo got together and at the end of March, introduced a joint proposal to broaden the act. The new bill would cover less of California than the original Badillo bill and would not cover the areas of concentration of French- and German-speaking people that had been in Barbara’s original bill. It was the sort of compromise for which Barbara had been criticized in the past, but she firmly believed the bill was necessary to protect the rights of the Blacks in Texas and Hispanics throughout the United States. One day when she was testifying before the House Judiciary Committee in support of broadening the act, she pointed out that her own political career probably could have begun earlier if the act had been in effect in Texas in the early 1960s.
Republican committee member M. Caldwell Butler of Virginia started to make a comment. Barbara, who was a little tired of all the criticism she had been getting about her bill, sternly requested that Butler not interrupt her testimony. Later, Butler apologized for the interruption, but added, “The observation I was trying to make was that if the act had been in effect earlier, you probably would be president by now.”
As a second-term representative, Barbara was certainly far from the presidency, but at times it seemed that she was nearly as much in demand as a speaker. Early in May, as part of the required financial disclosures of members of Congress, she reported lecture fees of $12,500 from 1974 alone. And lectures for which she was paid constituted only a small portion of the number of appearances she actually made. There were speeches at Democratic fundraising events and at testimonials for various friends and fellow members of the Texas delegation; there were awards and countless testimonial tributes to her. And she had received honorary degrees from numerous colleges and universities. Such unpaid appearances were part of her responsibilities as a public figure, and although they were time-consuming, Barbara generally did not mind them. They were usually pleasant and uneventful. In May 1975, she was invited to receive an honorary degree that she was particularly pleased to accept, since it was to be awarded to her by Texas Southern University at its annual graduation ceremonies.
Only later did Barbara learn that one graduate had been missing that day—Ovide Duncantell, who had stood in front of her office back in June 1972 and called upon her to pardon a jailed T.S.U. student while she was “Governor for a Day.” Duncantell was to have received a bachelor’s degree in sociology during the ceremony, but instead he was in jail, having been arrested for, among other things, resisting arrest, felonious criminal mischief, public intoxication, disorderly conduct, and jaywalking. Duncantell contended that he had been arrested and jailed so that he could not attend the T.S.U. graduation; that a “higher up” had “thought it was an affront to colored people [for Duncantell] to be in the same line with Barbara Jordan.” Barbara never learned whose side of the story—Duncantell’s or that of the police—was true.
Back in Washington, Barbara actively went to work on a bill that would abolish so-called fair-trade laws, laws that were instituted during the Great Depression to protect small businesses and small manufacturing concerns. What they amounted to were price-fixing laws that were unfair to the consumer. Barbara had done considerable research on these laws. She had found that in states with fair-trade laws consumers paid up to 37 percent more for products than persons in states without fair-trade laws paid. Despite the fact that some states had repealed their fair-trade laws, thirty-six still maintained them. Barbara felt a federal law covering all states would ensure balanced and fair enforcement. In mid-May, she introduced her bill into the House. Because a similar bill had been introduced in the Senate and because President Ford had indicated he would support abolition of fair-trade laws, she did not foresee any problem with the passage of her bill.
The bill to broaden the provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was another matter. Back in Texas, Governor Dolph Briscoe and other opponents of her bill were doing their utmost to prove that the Voting Rights Act did not need to be extended to Texas. In the middle of May, Governor Briscoe signed into law a bill that required the use of bilingual materials in each election precinct in counties with more than 5 percent Hispanic population. In June, he sent a letter to every member of the U.S. Senate stating that he bitterly resented congressional efforts to dictate Texas’s election procedures. His and other Texans’ attempts to forestall an expanded Voting Rights Act were fruitless, however. On July 27, the Senate passed and sent to the House a bill that would extend the act for seven years and expand its coverage to Texas and other areas with “language minorities.” The House had already passed Barbara’s bill, which called for a ten-year extension. But to resolve the differences between the two bills would require a House-Senate conference committee and before it could be reported out of the committee, August 6 might pass and the 1965 bill would expire. No supporter of broadening the act wanted it to expire. On July 28, the House approved the Senate-passed bill by a 346 to 56 margin.
Barbara, who was the chief sponsor of the “language minorities” expansion, was invited to attend the ceremony on August 6 at which President Ford signed the bill into law. The president made brief remarks, which were printed out for him on large index cards. Barbara noticed the cards. After the signing, as the president chatted in the rose garden with members of Congress and civil rights leaders who had attended the ceremony, Barbara asked for the cards and wondered if he would autograph the last one for her. Ford obliged and Barbara smilingly put the cards into her purse.
Ordinarily Barbara was not a collector, but as she said, “This is my first big legislative victory,” and she wanted the memento.
It is important to point out here just what is involved in getting a bill under the president’s pen. In the House, as in the Senate, before a bill ever reaches the floor it must go to a standing committee, whichever one is appropriate to consider the particular bill. Once in committee, it usually goes to a subcommittee, where it can be considered quickly or delayed indefinitely. A bill can languish in committee for years, but if its sponsor can get sufficient backing for it, he or she can usually get it moving. If the bill is recommended by the committee, it is reported onto the floor, where it is voted on by the full House. If it is passed, it must still be voted on by the Senate. If it is passed in the Senate, it goes to the president. If he does not veto it, the bill at last becomes law. Despite the length and complexity of this process, congressmen usually introduce or cosponsor many bills each session. One reason, of course, is that they must show their constituents that they are actively working for them and thus should be reelected. It is not unusual for an individual congressman to introduce between 200 and 500 bills in a two-year term. Barbara introduced or co-sponsored 72 bills during her first year in the House. But what really counts is getting one’s bills passed, and Barbara had proved admirably that she could do that. During her first term she was the principal sponsor or co-sponsor of fifteen bills that became law.
In December she saw another bill for which she had been largely responsible signed into law—legislation to wipe out fair-trade laws. Barbara was invited to the signing ceremony, and had her photograph taken with Peter Rodino and President Ford and carried by the major news services. Although it is likely that she kept a copy of the photo, or at least a clipping from one of newspapers in which it appeared, Barbara needed no special mementos of the occasion. She felt like a veteran legislator by now.
There are some who think she acted like a veteran from the moment she arrived in Congress. “There was no learning process for Barbara Jordan,” they say. “She seemed to know the day she got here how experienced congressmen act, how they get heard. She’s unbelievably savvy politically—maybe it’s Texas.”
