Remembering Vernon Jordan

How fitting that Vernon Jordan made it through the month devoted to Black History, which in so many ways his life embodied -- from waiting tables in his mother's Atlanta restaurant to fighting for voting rights and narrowly missing assassination to advising giant corporations and U.S. presidents.

His death this week at 85 was also a personal loss. Covering Vernon for a Newsweek cover story in 1973, I got to go both to the White House (Richard Nixon's) and Jordan's own house for a family breakfast and my first taste of grits, a reminder of the roots he never forgot.

It was an honor to know him and always a pleasure to hear his elegant voice, as in these Newsweek On Air interviews he made time for over the years that followed.

https://archive.org/details/newsweekonair_921129_complete at 00:38 on President-elect Bill Clinton's transition operation, the metamorphosis of black leadership and his own political and corporate roles.

https://archive.org/details/newsweekonair_011021_complete at 44:10 on "Vernon Can Read!" -- his memoir of progress in the civil rights movement and beyond.

https://archive.org/details/newsweekonair_081026_complete/newsweekonair_081026_complete/07+-+Track07.flac on the power of words, advocacy, voting rights and the Democratic primary race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom in the end considered him a friend.