Her high-school days at Phyllis Wheatley High School and her college years at Texas Southern University, where she was a champion debator paved the way for her success. She overcame prejudice to become a lawyer and to enter the field of electoral politics.
She overcame defeat to become the first African-American since Recon-struction to serve in the Texas Senate. Social justice and equality became the theme she carried to her election to the U.S. Congress, where she sponsored bills to extend the Voting Rights Act to all Americans. Americans came to know her during the Watergate hearings, when she spoke out eloquently for the Constitution, and as a keynote speaker for the Democratic national conventions. A debilitating disease brought her home to Texas, where she extended her message of equality and justice to the students at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and as ethics advisor to Governor Ann Richards. And then the great voice was stilled, but her legacy lives on, captured for young readers and readers of all ages in Barbara Jordan: Breaking the Barriers.
