"One of the Great Unifying Forces in the Country"

When a howling white mob tried to prevent Charlayne Hunter from entering the hitherto segregated University of Georgia in 1961, a broad-shouldered black cleared a path for her by using his 6-ft. 4 1/2-in. body as a battering ram. He was a young (25) law clerk named Vernon Eulion Jordan Jr. Since then Jordan has moderated his tactics, but he has kept on pushing just as forcefully for black rights and equal opportunity. At the same time, he has become, in the words of Mitchell Sviridoff, a vice president of the Ford Foundation, "one of the great unifying forces in the country between the black and white communities," and a man who has shown himself to be as skillful in the boardrooms of New York City as he was on the streets of his native Atlanta.

Born in 1935, Jordan was reared straitened middle-class circumstances. His father was a postal supervisor, his mother a caterer; her business is now operated by one of Jordan's two brothers. Though Jordan never lived in actual poverty, he once observed: "I rode in the back of the bus, I sat upstairs in the theater, I sat upstairs in the courtroom." After earning a bachelor's degree in political science at DePauw University ('57) and a law degree from Howard University ('60), Jordan set out to do his best to end those injustices.

He worked first for Civil Rights Lawyer Donald Hollowell, who successfully sued to open the University of Georgia to black students. In 1962, as state field secretary for the N.A.A.C.P., Jordan led a boycott that forced stores in Atlanta to hire blacks. Two years later he became director of the Southern Regional Council's Voter Education Project. Traveling almost constantly, from big city ghetto to impoverished hamlet, he urged blacks to set aside their fears of white retaliation and register to vote. By 1968 the South had nearly 2 million new black voters, the number of black elected officials in the region had jumped almost eightfold, to 564, and Vernon Jordan was a nationally known civil rights leader.

Two years later, Jordan was named executive director of the United Negro College Fund, and he moved to New York City; in his first twelve months the organization raised a record $8 million for its 36 member colleges. When Whitney Young Jr. drowned in Nigeria in 1971, Jordan succeeded him as head of the National Urban League. It had been founded in 1910 to help black migrants from the rural South find jobs, housing and education in Northern cities.

Today the league serves much the same kind of function, but most of the people it assists come from urban ghettos all over the country. Jordan puts particular emphasis on jobs, even in these times of high inflation. Says he: "My common sense tells me that the more people who work in this society, the better it is." Under Jordan, the league has added 17 affiliates, giving it a total of 117. Its general fund budget has grown from some $4.4 million to $6.6 million, which comes mostly from contributions by foundations and corporations. Thus the league in a sense serves as a bridge between white executives and black ghettos. Although the people helped by the league are generally poor, many blacks regard it as a middle-class organization, but Jordan has won the respect of blacks from all backgrounds. The Rev. Ralph Abernathy, who succeeded the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, calls Jordan "one of the ablest and most articulate voices in the civil and human rights movement."

Despite his lawyerly moderation, Jordan has no fear of controversy. In 1977 he sharply criticized Jimmy Carter, an old friend from Georgia days, for not keeping his campaign promises to help poor blacks. Jordan later demanded "an urban Marshall Plan that creates broader economic and social opportunities" for blacks. Even so, he said, Carter would always be welcome at his home for "chicken and conversation." Last fall Jordan attacked several prominent black leaders, including Chicago's Jesse Jackson, for supporting the Palestine Liberation Organization. Said Jordan: "The black civil rights movement has nothing in common with groups whose claim to legitimacy is compromised by cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians and schoolchildren."

With a six-figure income--$65,000 in salary plus fees as a director of seven corporations (including American Express and Xerox)--Jordan lives with his wife Shirley and daughter Vickee in a comfortable three-bedroom apartment on Fifth Avenue. He is an avid tennis player and pro football fan. He travels in a chauffeured Mercury, wears Brooks Brothers suits and relishes expensive wines and cigars.

Because of this lifestyle, some black leaders have complained that he has become too much a part of the American establishment. But to Jordan that is precisely the point. As he said in his first major address after being named to head the National Urban League: "Black power will remain just a shout and a cry unless it is channeled into constructive efforts to bring about black political power and to influence the established institutions of American politics."

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