Vernon Jordan, Jr.
From Metapedia
Vernon Eulion Jordan, Jr. (born August 15, 1935) is a lawyer and business executive in the United States. He served as a close advisor to President William J. Clinton.
[edit] Biography
Jordan lived in Atlanta, Georgia during the 1950s, where he earned money for college as chauffeur to former mayor Robert Maddox. He graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, in 1957. He earned a law degree at Howard University in 1960.
Jordan, who is black, then returned to Atlanta to join the law office of Donald L. Hollowell, a black activist. After leaving private law practice in the early 1960s, Jordan served as the Georgia field director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. From the NAACP he moved to the Southern Regional Council and then to the Voter Education Project. In 1970 Jordan became executive director of the United Negro College Fund and was president of the National Urban League from 1972 to 1981.
On May 29, 1980 he was shot and seriously wounded outside the Marriott Inn in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Joseph Paul Franklin was acquitted in 1982 of charges of attempted murder, but Franklin in 1996 admitted to having committed the shooting.
Jordan resigned from the National Urban League, and he took a position as legal counsel with the Washington, D.C. office of the Dallas law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.
Jordan, a friend and advisor to Bill Clinton, served as part of Clinton's transition team in 1992-1993, shortly after he was elected President.
Jordan is Senior Managing Director with Lazard Freres & Co. LLC, an investment banking firm, from January 2000 to the present. He is also currently a member of the board of directors of multiple corporations, including American Express, J.C. Penney Corporation, Xerox, Asbury Automotive Group and the Dow Jones & Company. He is formerly a member of the board of directors of Revlon, Sara Lee, Corning and RJR Nabisco during 1989 leveraged buy-out fight between RJR Nabisco CEO F. Ross Johnson and Henry R. Kravis and his company KKR.
Jordan is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2005, he attended the annual Bilderberg conference.
In 2006, Jordan served as a member of the Iraq Study Group, which was formed to make recommendations on the U.S. policy in Iraq.
