Vernon Jordan: Make it Plain

Vernon Jordan is the Rosa Parks of Wall Street.

The voice of reason or conscience for presidents.

If I ask Vernon,

I'm gonna get something that's meaningful.

I had to listen to how handsome and brilliant and

good he was, you know, it was revolting.

"Vernon Jordan: Make it Plain"

Coming up next.

Funding for "Vernon Jordan: Make it Plain"

was provided by Ford Foundation Just Films.

And by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation.

Good morning, sir.

They got you up early this morning.

Yes, sir.

.

All right.

Call Powell's secretary and see if we're gonna have to respond.

Yeah. All right. I'll talk to you.

Bernard, how you been. Okay?

I'm fine, thank you, sir.

This yesterday's paper? It's all about the election.

Yes.

I'm tired of reading about that.

.

My father was a hard-working man.

He was a mail carrier.

And my father would have been very content

had I finished high school,

married a nice girl, got a job in the post office.

For him that would have been very, a good thing.

And my mother's attitude,

"“That's not good enough for this boy.

He's gonna do things, and he's gonna go places."”

And I believed her.

Our guest today on "“Meet the Press"”

is Vernon E. Jordan, Junior,

President of the National Urban League.

Mr. Jordan has been active in civil rights work

including the NAACP

and the Voters Education Project for twenty-one years.

He survived an assassin's bullet in Fort Wayne, Indiana,

last year.

He has announced his resignation from the Urban League

effective the end of this month to go into private law practice.

But it's obvious today that the civil rights movement is

meeting some kind of resistance or in some way

perhaps has ended.

Is it the same as it used to be?

Is the momentum gone?

Has the civil rights movement ended?

Well, I think that too many people want to measure

the civil rights movement by the drama of the 1960's.

Uh, what has happened is that that drama has changed,

and that drama brought about many,

many significant changes,

it, the Civil Rights Act of '64.

I see Vernon Jordan a little differently than

traditional civil rights leaders.

He understood that you can work to help people

on the ground.

But that work is always going to be operating under an

umbrella of public policy.

You can't help people without changing the

public policies that create the circumstances

in which they live.

We have no full-employment policy.

We have no welfare reform policy.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill,

"“Never have so many expected so much and

received so little."”

.

When I met Hillary in 1971,

first thing she did was tell me about Vernon Jordan.

I had to listen to how handsome and brilliant

and good he was.

You know, it was revolting.

He wanted to make his contribution be part of

the movement but have a unique life.

The advisor to presidents, not just me.

Vernon Jordan was the first person to realize

that a devastatingly effective form of black power would be

top-down integration at the heart of

American capitalism:

Wall Street.

Vernon Jordan has done more to integrate the corridors of

financial power than any African American in history.

Vernon Jordan is the Rosa Parks of Wall Street.

"Rows start chanting, rocking to the same rhythm in

our old rocking chair."

Speech Maker has a big responsibility.

"To the highest aspirations."

It has to be sufficiently entertaining that

people will listen.

But then he has to say something that

makes listening worthwhile...

"Back in the back of his mouth."

Sometimes I sit here trying to figure out what to say,

and I look at my mom, and I say,

"“What do you think about this?"”

Nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records

ordered deported from our country are tonight

roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens.

.

Build that wall, Build that wall!

We're waiting on you right now.

Sent you to get me down the stairs.

Everyone sent me to give you the message.

.

So do we have everybody?

Should LB ride with us in the back?

Are you going to drive separate?

Can't you fit three in the, you put three in front?

What?

Nanna, go.

Too many bosses.

.

.

I got the phrase, "Make it Plain" in church.

He said, "“Make it plain, Preacher.

Put it there where we can get it."”

Good morning, Rankin Chapel.

Good morning.

During these times it is tempting to believe that

our problems are particular and that our

situation is unprecedented.

I have come to say to you this morning,

"“We have been here before."”

.

I am reminded of my earliest exposure to American politics.

Growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1943,

there was a gubernatorial race.

And Governor Eugene Talmadge comes on WSB radio,

and he says, "“Fellow Georgians,

I am running for re-election.

I have two planks in my platform: niggers and roads.

I am against the first, and for the second.

This is exactly what President Trump is saying now.

.

Except his two planks are immigrants and jobs.

He's against the first, and claims to be for the second.

So when the executive orders bar people from our shores

based on what they look like or how they worship,

it is hard not to hear the echoes of Strom Thurmond on

the campaign trail in 1948 or George Wallace

in the schoolhouse door in 1963 saying,

"“Segregation today, tomorrow, forever."”

We have been here before.

.

Indeed, because we have been here before,

we know we will endure.

But our journey also teaches us that endurance

is not enough.

Listen. We do not sing, "“We shall endure."”

.

We sing, "“We shall overcome."”

.

A member of the Fulton County Commission

made a speech recently and was quoted in the

Atlanta Constitution as saying that we have to have

annexation so as to prevent

the center city from being governed by, quote,

"“the uneducated and the unfit."”

Now, if that is the basis for annexation,

I'm opposed to it.

Because the uneducated and the unfit that

he's talkin' about is me,

is Maynard, is Leroy, or others of us in the black community

who not only are educated but are well educated

and certainly are well fit to do anything in this

community that any white man can do in this community.

Thank you.

.

Whenever I come to Atlanta,

I come by and say "“hello" ” to my mother.

And now I get to say "“hello" ” to my mother and my brother.

I am proud of having grown up in Atlanta, Georgia.

I grew up in the first public housing project

for black people in America.

My father, very committed to going to work,

gettin' there on time,

and then workin' later that night

as a bartender in my mother's catering business.

Work was a big value in the Jordan family.

I can't remember, after I was twelve years old,

not having a job somewhere.

I was a head dishwasher when I was fifteen years old

at Emory University,

because I was the only one working in the dish room

who could read.

You only came in contact with white people when you got on

the bus and they sat up front and you sat in the back.

I remember catching a streetcar.

And my mother would say,

"“Just because you have to sit back here,

and they have to sit up there,

does not mean that they are better than you.

You are as good as anybody on this streetcar."”

This whole experience, um,

convinced me that, if I got educated,

I could do something about it.