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Flagship activist Vernon Jordan has died

Vernon Jordan, who grew up in the American South of racial discrimination and became an influential leader of the American civil rights movement, a politician in Washington and Wall Street, has died at the age of 85, according to media quoting his family.

Jordan, who in 1980 was seriously wounded by a sniper, a proponent of white supremacy, in Indiana, died yesterday, Monday night, according to the media.

Jordan “quietly left last night among his loved ones. “We are grateful for all the overflow of love and affection,” said Vicky Jordan, daughter of CNBC and New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin. CBS and CNN also broadcast the news of his death, citing family members.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), of which Jordan was a board member, issued a statement today expressing “deep sorrow” over his death. , calling him “an honorable lawyer and leader who has helped promote civil rights in America throughout his career.”

Jordan worked until the 1980s, moving between international law firm and lobbying firm Grump Akin in Washington and financial consulting firm Lazard in New York.

Jordan’s role as an insider in Washington brought him to the White House, where was a close friend and adviser to President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

He never held an official government position, but no one knew better than Jordan how favors, access, and demands work in Washington. In 2018, the Financial Times called him “one of the most connected men in America.”

Jordan grew up in a slum in Atlanta before his family bought her own home and was the only black man in his class at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana.

Jordan graduated from Howard University with a degree in law and returned to Atlanta to work as a human rights lawyer. first day of their classes.

Jordan later went to work for the NAACP and the United Negro College Fund before becoming head of the National Urban League in 1971.

Following successes with voting rights and equal access laws, Jordan’s approach was to push for greater financial opportunities for blacks, even in business meeting rooms.

At an Urban League event, Jordan said he had told the organisation’s business donors: “Don’t just give us money and don’t just show up for an Equal Opportunity Dinner. That’s not enough if you look at the purchasing power of blacks in this country. It is not enough to come and shake hands with us and be our friends. We want to be inside. “

Under his leadership, the Urban League began publishing its annual reports, State of Black America, on the social and economic situation of black Americans.

American companies such as American Express, Xerox, Dow Jones, Bankers Trust, RJR Nabisco, Revlon and Sara Lee included him on their boards, in which he was often the only black man.

“She’m something like Rosa Parks on Wall Street.” said Harvard historian Henry Lewis Gates Jr. in an interview with Bloomberg News. “He realized that the first phase of the modern civil rights movement was to fight legal racial segregation, but the roots of racism were basically economic.”

Jordan belonged in the close quarters of President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s and Carter reportedly offered him positions in his government. Jordan would eventually become a critic of Carter, saying he had not kept his financial promises to blacks.

In 1980, Jordan was seriously injured while getting out of the car of a white woman who was a member of the Urban League in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Joseph Paul Franklin, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party who was convicted of a series of racial murders, admitted that he had set an ambush but was acquitted. He initially said he hated interracial couples.

After ten years in the Urban League, Jordan wanted something different and so he joined Gump Akin. Tall and imposing, he gained a reputation as a charming and convincing “Washington wise man”. When Clinton was elected president in 1992, she chose Jordan, whom she had known since the early 1970s, as the leader of his transition team.

In 1999, Jordan became the director of Lazard in order to bring new companies and executives to the company.

In 2008, when Barack Obama was running for the first black president, Jordan sided with his friends and backed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. According to the Financial Times, Jordan told Obama, “I’m too old to trade friendship with race.”.

Jordan’s first wife, Shirley Jordan, died of multiple sclerosis in 1985. They had a child. In 1986 he married Ann Dibble.

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