Vernon Jordan (Courtesy of howard.edu)

By  Gary  Raynaldo     DIPLOMATIC TIMES

WASHINGTON  DC  –  In 1980 civil rights leader Vernon E. Jordan Jr. was shot in the back and seriously injured by a sniper.  A sniper fired  a .30-06 rifle at  Jordan as he was getting out of an automobile outside the Marriott Motor Inn in Fort Wayne, Ind.  Jordan, who was then the president of the National Urban League, spent 98 days in the hospital before recovering.  Joseph Paul Franklin, an avowed racist convicted of two murders in Salt Lake City, was indicted by a Federal grand jury on a charge of shooting Jordan.  However, he was never prosecuted in Jordan’s case; he was put to death in 2013 for another slaying in Missouri. Jordan died last week at the age of 85.  Howard University on Monday announced that it would be naming its law school library in honor of Jordan, an alumnus and former President Clinton adviser.

“Vernon Jordan’s life embodied Howard’s motto of truth and service from his early beginnings as a lawyer to his work in the civil rights movement and later as an advisor to Presidents Reagan, Bush, Carter and most prominently as a friend and advisor to President Bill Clinton,” said Howard University President Wayne A. I. Frederick.

(credit: Gary Raynaldo  / ©Diplomatic  Times /  Howard University School of Law in Washington D.C.

Howard U president added:

“Mr. Jordan is the kind of person who never met a stranger and who enjoyed mentoring students to help them succeed. He often told a story about spending his summers in college working as a chauffeur for Mr. Robert Maddox, a former Mayor and retired banker in Atlanta, GA, who owned a vast home library. Mr. Jordan spent his down time reading the books and when Maddox found out, he was shocked and begrudgingly gave him permission to continue reading. One night at the dinner table, Maddox proclaimed to his family, ‘Vernon can read!’ Mr. Jordan never forgot that experience and it became a pivotal moment in his vast narrative of triumph over controversy. Therefore, it is most fitting that we name one of Howard’s libraries in his honor.”

credit: Gary Raynaldo  / ©Diplomatic  Times /  Howard University School of Law in Washington D.C.

Jordan was senior managing director of Lazard Frères & Co. LLC in New York, where he worked with a diverse group of clients across a broad range of industries. Prior to joining Lazard, he was a senior executive partner with the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, where he served as senior counsel. While there, he practiced general, corporate, legislative and international law in Washington, D.C and New York.  Jordan was a graduate of DePauw University and the Howard University School of Law, and he holds honorary degrees from more than 60 colleges and universities in America. He was a member of the bars of Arkansas, the District of Columbia, Georgia and the U.S. Supreme Court. He was a member of the American Bar Association, the National Bar Association, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Meetings.