The Most Important Thing You Don't Know About Vernon Jordan
Vernon Eulion Jordan Jr. (August 15, 1935 – March 1, 2021) was an American business executive and civil rights activist who worked for Civil Rights Movement organizations before being chosen by President Bill Clinton as his close adviser.
Jordan was born in New York City
Jordan worked for the New York State Comptroller's Office and the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Attorney's Office for Civil Rights. He was counsel to the World Bank and later became the president and chief operating officer of the Urban League, where he remained for nearly 20 years. During the administration of President Bill Clinton, Jordan was the White House liaison for the Civil Rights Division in the U.S. Department of Justice, but was eventually forced to resign. At Clinton's request, Jordan became an advisor to the Clinton Foundation. In the final months of his life, Jordan served on the transition team that would take the reins of power in the White House in January 2017. Jordan died of complications from leukemia.
He was the son of Vernon E. Jordan Sr., a prominent New York City attorney who became a Wall Street lawyer, and the former Jacqueline Rivett
Vernon Jordan was born into a prominent African American family on August 15, 1935 in Chicago, Illinois. His father Vernon Eulion Jordan Sr. (died 1990) was the son of a slave born in Mississippi. His mother was the daughter of Henry Solomon (died 1956) and Jewel Tynes, who came to Chicago from Georgia during the Great Migration in search of jobs and opportunity. Jordan had three brothers: Howard, Geoffrey, and Harold. He was raised in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, where he graduated from Upper Darby High School in 1953. After graduating from Stanford University in 1956, Jordan attended Yale Law School. He married Helen Newman. Together they had a son, Vernon Jordan III. After law school, Jordan was admitted to the New York State Bar.
He had a passion for music and the arts
Jordan was one of Clinton’s closest and most trusted friends. During the 1992 Presidential campaign, Jordan co-chaired the joint Clinton–Gore effort and the Clinton Global Initiative. While serving as Chief of Staff to Clinton, he reportedly coordinated more than $500 million in federal government contracts and approximately $1 billion in corporate donations. After leaving the Clinton White House, Jordan served as CEO of the Clinton Foundation. Jordan’s business activities also included substantial ownership in media companies, such as the cable television channel BET and the hip-hop music label imprint Columbia House, as well as a stake in The Washington Post.
Jordan had a brother and a sister, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., also a high-profile civil rights activist and a former United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
The pair were the second set of brothers who entered politics in the twentieth century, along with the Kennedys. Vernon Eulion Jordan was born to Vernon Eulion Jordan Sr., a black United Methodist minister, and Lois Mae Clayborn Jordan (née Spikes), a black elementary school teacher, in Nashville, Tennessee. He grew up in a black neighborhood of Nashville that was deeply entrenched in poverty. As a young boy, Jordan played tackle football in the streets with his boyhood friends. Jordan was an honors student at Nashville's Central High School, where he graduated in 1954. In 1956, Jordan graduated from Vanderbilt University, where he played on the Vanderbilt Commodores football team, and from Vanderbilt University Law School.
Jordan was baptized in the Episcopal Church at the Church of the Nativity, on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
Jordan's parents, Vernon Jordan Sr. and the former Elsa Mae Balcom, were both upper-middle-class blacks from Washington, D.C. His father was a professor of economics at Howard University, who was born in 1910 and educated at Columbia University. In the 1930s, his grandfather Abraham moved to Washington, D.C., to work as a counsel in the Office of Price Administration. Jordan Jr. was the second of four children; his father had been born in 1911 and died in 1980. Jordan attended exclusive New York City schools, including Choate Rosemary Hall and St. Albans School, where he was a student from 1947–54. He then attended the University of Michigan from 1954–56, and then transferred to the University of Michigan Law School, from which he graduated in 1960.
Jordan was married five times, his first three wives were all non-white
The events surrounding his remarriage, resignation and death have been the subject of conspiracy theories, since the chief witnesses to the events did not reveal all the information they had before they died. Jordan was reported to have left a will that would have transferred his wealth to the Rev. Sharpton, the political activist and lawyer who had been the judge’s mentor. Sharpton denied any relationship, and Jordan's son said the will was a lie. (Published Thursday, May 1, 2014) Born in Greensboro, North Carolina, Jordan graduated from Morehouse College and did graduate work at the University of Virginia. He later received an MBA at Harvard Business School.
Jordan's last wife was Michelle Buss
Early Life Jordan was born in Greenville, Mississippi, a part of the segregated American South, the third child of Vernon Jordan Sr. and his wife, Sally. He was the eldest of five children and was raised by his grandparents, Samuel and Kessie Jordan, who both died when Jordan was young. After his grandfather's death, the Jordan children were raised by their mother. His childhood memories were uneventful, with his childhood hero being a cowboy. Jordan earned his BA from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1959. He was the first African American student to join the prestigious fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha. In 1959, Jordan married his college sweetheart, Dorothy Crocker (born 1942), a student at the historically Black Clark College.
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