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• "Vernon Jordan says CEO pay has gotten 'out of hand'"
• About Make It Plain: Standing Up and Speaking Out
• Center for Civil & Human Rights
• Mr. Jordan's bio

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Web Exclusive (6:17)
 

Full interview. (25:58)
 

Tavis: Pleased and honored to welcome Vernon Jordan to this program. We were just chatting. The influential political adviser and long-time civil rights attorney has held so many high-profile posts and board positions during his career, including president of the National Urban League and executive director of the United Negro College Fund.

His latest book is a collection of great speeches he's given over the years called "Make it Plain: Standing Up and Speaking Out." What a rare honor to have you on the west coast.

Vernon Jordan: Glad to be here.

Tavis: You doing all right?

Jordan: Thank you very much.

Tavis: You don't come out west too often, do you?

Jordan: Well, I do come a lot, but I just don't get in this neighborhood.

Tavis: In this area, yeah. (Laughter) Well, I'm glad to have you in this neighborhood.

Jordan: Yeah. By that I meant the television set.

Tavis: Yeah, yeah, and I know what you mean. I'm glad to have you here, though. Let me start, if I can - I got you for the whole show, which is a beautiful thing - let me start, if I might, with some topics of the day.

Jordan: Sure.

Tavis: Some news issues I want to get your take on. And then we'll jump into making it plain.

In no particular order, the GM bankruptcy. You have sat on the board of an auto company so you know what this is like. What do you make of this particular bankruptcy?

Jordan: Well, it's sort of an American tragedy. When I was growing up in the public housing projects of Atlanta my parents believed that General Motors was the ultimate place to own stock or to work, and there was a lot of conversation.

I remember in 1940 when we bought our first car. It was a Pontiac car, 1940, blue, four-door, and that was a big thing not just in the family but in the community. So General Motors has been with us, certainly my family, for a very long time, and if it's American, it's General Motors, and it is fallen. And that is a great American tragedy, I think.

Tavis: What do you make of how the Congress has handled this tragedy? And by that I mean to ask what you make of the fact that the American people were told that we had to put billions of dollars out to keep these companies afloat, and some of this money obviously very recently, some of this during Obama's tenure.

So the American people are told we have to save the auto industry and after billions of dollars, one by one they keep filing bankruptcy. It's almost as if the American public has been bamboozled, run amok, led astray, lied to. How do you pour that kind of money in and you don't know that they're on the verge of bankruptcy?

Jordan: I don't think there's been any bamboozling here.

Tavis: Okay.

Jordan: I think that we're at a place we've never been and so we're trying things that we've never tried and I think that the government, led by President Obama, is doing what it can to not only save the company, because to save the company is to save the workers, to help the economy.

And the government, throughout its history, has been the place of last resort. You remember years ago Chrysler had to be saved by the government and we're back again, because the government is the ultimate place, it's the ultimate representative voice of the people.

I worry about the Congress legislating about something it doesn't know an awful lot about. That worries me. But I think that the president has led us to a good place in this process, and I think we just have to hope and pray it works out.

Tavis: Because you sat on and do sit on a number of major boards, beyond this conversation about the automobile industry, Vernon Jordan, what's your sense of - how might I ask this? What is the future of capitalism? There's a lot of conversation about that these days.

Jordan: Yeah, I think it's here to stay. There is no process that is an easy process when it comes to providing people with an opportunity to have the little white house and the green shutters and the white picket fence and tuition for the kids and all. That's always been a hard and difficult process.

I think that we've proven in America that the process of democracy and the free enterprise system has benefited people and enabled people to rise from here to here and live a good life. And I think that we have to continue to believe that but there will be en route flat tires on the way.

The motor will stop running, and that's where we are. And because we are there, we have to have some patience, we have to have some understanding of where we are, and we have to have leadership. And I believe that President Obama is giving that.

Tavis: We'll come back to Obama hopefully a little later in our conversation.

Jordan: Sure.

Tavis: Let me (unintelligible) these news issues of the day, though; a couple more I want to squeeze in right quick. Judge Sonia Sotomayor, she's now making the rounds on Capitol Hill, meeting with senators, getting ready for what some would call a fight to be confirmed, what others would call a walk in the park. President Obama appears to have the votes.

What's your read not so much on whether she's going to be confirmed, although I'm happy to hear that, but on how she has been treated thus far in this process?

Jordan: Well, there's an old saying amongst us lawyers: When the law is against you, you pound the table with facts. If the facts are against you, you pound the table with law. If both are against you, you just pound the table. (Laughter) And so that's where Republicans find themselves now. They're just pounding the table.

And quite honestly, some of it's idiotic to suggest that a person who graduated from Princeton, one of "their" schools, summa cum laude, editor of the Yale Law Review, does not have the intellectual capacity, but who's also been on the circuit court for 17 years. That's an insult in my judgment.

The notion that she is a racist is blindingly idiotic in my view. I heard this morning that my fellow Georgian, Newt Gingrich, backed down from the notion that she was a racist, but the damage is already done. It's out there. I think this, for the president and for the country, is a political home run, and I think that ultimately she will be confirmed and she will get Republican support.

Tavis: What do you make, then, of that - again, back to your word - idiotic strategy? Is Washington so steeped in its own idiotic ways that they can't -

Jordan: Well, see, I don't think it's Washington in the traditional sense. Rush Limbaugh lives in Florida and you would think that he had some elected or appointed position within the Republican Party.

Tavis: But it is partisan politics.

Jordan: He does not. Some of it's partisan politics and I understand partisan politics. I do not understand racist comments. What is very interesting is that nobody seems to remember right now what Justice Taney wrote in the Dred Scott decision. It was dictum, but he wrote "A Black man has no rights that a White man is bound to respect." This is the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court.

People seem to have forgotten that. People seem to have forgotten that distinguished judges like Brandeis and Benjamin Cardozo, distinguished in the law, did not always vote in support of equality for people that were not White people.

Tavis: There is one last thing I want to get your thought on. We've referenced President Obama a couple of times in this conversation. How do you think he's doing, overall?

Jordan: I give him an A for leadership. And it's still an unbelievable - it's incredulous, still. I was born in 1935 in Atlanta, Georgia, and I remember the 1943 gubernatorial campaign - Eugene Talmadge and Ellis Arnold fighting it out.

Eugene Talmadge had two platforms in his - two planks in his platform: niggers and roads. And we've come, in my life, from there to this? It's unbelievable, still. I'm still pinching myself from election night when the networks declared Barack Hussein Obama to be president of the United States.

Now, given the fact that that has happened, that does not mean that we can now declare that the war is over, that the victory is won, and we cannot now take off these war-torn garments and stick our swords in the sand of time and say, "Free at last, free at last." We've just elected him. What comes after an election is governance and leadership, not just at home, but abroad, where he is now, trying to deal with the issues of the Middle East.

But I think he's ready, he's able, and I think he's giving the kind of leadership that he promised us.

Tavis: Since we're talking about making it plain and you referenced being born and raised in Atlanta in a time different than the one we live now, thankfully, how do Black people learn to do this dance with him, and by dance I mean whether you're talking Congressional Black Caucus or those of us in the media or anybody else who respects him, who is delighted that he's there, but has to walk this tightrope of accountability?

Jordan: See, I don't - no, I don't think it's a tightrope because I think that we have a responsibility in this democratic process to hold President Obama's feet to the fire as we did for Bush or Clinton or Reagan or Carter - whomever. Being Black does not mean that we would give him a different standard, and that means that we can disagree with him, and we can disagree with him honestly and intellectually.

And believe it or not he will appreciate that. I think he understands how the government works. He is not going to do everything that we think that he should do when we want him to do it, and he understands that democracy or that the democratic process is one where you might want to go this way and I might want to go this way, but in the discussion we will decide to go this way together.

Tavis: You made a reference a moment ago to a phrase, "The victory has been won." That comes straight out of the Black church.

Jordan: Yes.

Tavis: It was the same thing I thought when I saw this book title, "Make it Plain."

Jordan: Right out of the pews of the Black church.

Tavis: Why'd you choose it? I like it. Why'd you choose it?

Jordan: I've heard it all my life. I grew up in St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church in Atlanta and I can hear the trustees and the stewards responding as the preacher reached the crescendo of his sermon - "Make it plain, Preacher. Make it plain." The most famous voice for this is Daddy King. When Martin would be in the pulpit or giving a speech, he couldn't help himself. And he would say, "Make it plain, Martin."

And so most of my civil rights career was making speeches, and I tried to make speeches so that people could understand what I was saying, and that's why I sort of thought "Make it Plain" was an appropriate title for this book.

Tavis: Let me ask you a question that might be impolitic, but I know Vernon Jordan can handle it. You may not know this because you are obviously absent when these conversations take place, but if I had a dime for every conversation I've been in over the course of my career where people, out of love for you, respect for you, admiration for you, find themselves in a conversation about how Vernon Jordan bridges these worlds, how he bridges these gaps - let me ask it this way, if I might.

How does Vernon Jordan, how has he, how does he, make it plain when you are clearly a power broker, you're an inside player with the White folk who run the world, and at the same time your background is so steeped in Blackness and you don't avoid speaking truths to power. How do you navigate those worlds?

Jordan: There is one guideline: integrity. That is the only thing that I own that is mine in fee simple absolute, and it is the only thing - I am the only person who knows when I have breached it.

And so whether I'm dealing in a corporate boardroom or whether I'm talking to leaders in the political system, if I keep that integrity in place for myself, then it works out.

Tavis: Tell me how your integrity came to rescue you - and you may want to change that phrase - as I look back now on your friend, my friend, Bill Clinton and the drama that he went through in the White House, and I can remember like yesterday you being called in front of the grand jury and testifying, all the rumor and all the innuendo about what was going to come out and how much trouble Vernon Jordan was in and is this the end of the road for Vernon Jordan, is his career over? I look back on that now, and you escaped that drama unscathed.

Jordan: No, no, it wasn't escaped. I just went through it, because I did the only thing I knew to do, and that was to tell the truth. That's integrity. And I did one other thing - I kept my mouth shut. (Laughter)

Tavis: That was my follow-up question. That was my follow-up question, because everybody either then or just after then, after that moment, that is, was sitting for interviews, and I kept looking and waiting and looking -

Jordan: Well, for almost six months there was media in my front door outside my house every day, and I never said a mumbling word. And I think it's instructive. When you guys turn on that little red light, I do not have to say anything, right? Secondly, when you turn on that red light and ask me a question, it's sometimes helpful to say honestly, "I do not know the answer to that."

Most politicians, leaders, think that they are required to give an answer to which they do not have at their disposal at that point. But they won't say, "I do not know the answer." It's always been my approach, number one, not to feel obligated to that little red light, but then if you ask me a question to which I do not know the answer, I have a responsibility, first to myself but also to you and to your viewers to say, "I don't know the answer to that." Ask me tomorrow -

Tavis: Yeah, I may know.

Jordan: Yeah.

Tavis: Yeah, yeah. A teacher taught me that in high school and I've tried to do that myself.

Jordan: Yeah.

Tavis: When did, how did oratory become so important to you and as a Black man, would you define for me the difference between being told that you are articulate and that you are eloquent?

Jordan: See, I think the two are exchangeable.

Tavis: You do?

Jordan: Yeah.

Tavis: Because a lot of folk - I get offended sometimes. People say, "He's so articulate." Articulate - no, he's eloquent. He's not just articulate, as if Negroes shouldn't be able to talk, speak well.

Jordan: Well, but both are compliments.

Tavis: Yeah, yeah.

Jordan: I don't really make a distinction. I got interested in this process, Tavis, at St. Paul church when I made my Easter speech that was required if you went to Sunday school.

I looked forward to the Easter speech and I was good at it. Some kids cried, some kids got on that pulpit and just couldn't say anything.

Tavis: Just froze, yeah.

Jordan: Yeah. I liked it and I looked forward to it. And then I won declamation contests. In high school I won the statewide Elks oratorical contest. I went to DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana and in my freshman year I won the Margaret Noble Lee Extemporaneous Speaking Contest against the advice of a senior who was sort of a mentor, and against the advice of my political science adviser.

They said, "You shouldn't do it," both, and I did it, and I won it. The next year, at Franklin College in Franklin, Indiana, I won the Indiana Interstate Oratorical Contest. The first time that a DePauw student had won it since Andrew J. Beverage in 1896, who served in the United States Senate representing Indiana.

But I also went to church every Sunday and I listened attentively to the preacher, and I could tell you as a youngster when the preacher thought about his sermon after he got to the pulpit, and I learned to distinguish between substance and volume, and I would tell my daddy, "That preacher didn't do much preparation." (Laughter) I knew it.

And then in my church I sang in the St. Cecilia choir and we had a monthly vesper hour on the fourth Sunday at 5:00 - one hour. And the leading citizens of our community, in the Black community, would come and speak - Benjamin Mays, Dr. Rufus Clement, Colonel A. T. Walden, University of Michigan Law School, 1915.

He would come and stand in the St. Paul pulpit and talk about segregation, and I can hear him now saying, of segregation, "I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal, you." And his office was right next door to the Butler Street YMCA, where I spent an awful lot of time, and I grew up wanting to talk like Walden, walk like Walden, dress like Walden, to be a civil rights lawyer like Walden, and that was the beauty of Atlanta.

That was the beauty of living right across the street from the Atlanta University Center. I can remember at 11 years old, maybe, walking home from the Ashbury Street Theater, and I always walked through the Morehouse College campus. Benjamin Elijah Mays is 20 yards ahead of me, and as he walked straight, with purpose, I tried to pattern myself as a kid, walking like Benjamin Mays. And fortunately I had the opportunity to become his friend when I graduated law school.

And so that's the interest. In college I read "Vital Speeches" as soon as it hit the library, promised myself that one day I would make vital speeches. The 10 years that I was at the Urban League, we made vital speeches.

So I've always been interested in it, and I like it because Tavis, to do it you have to like it. And some people say that's too much hubris; some people would say that that's a self-serving declaration, which in the law is inadmissible in most instances. (Laughter) But I like it.

Tavis: My time is up. There are two questions, though, that I am going to ask Vernon Jordan right now that you will have to go to our website at PBS.org to see his answers to. I will tell you the two questions. One, he is about to leave the studio in the not too distant future, give a speech, a tribute to the late, great John Hope Franklin, who was on this program once or twice, and I want to ask him what he is intending to say about John Hope Franklin.

And I also want to ask him to read a passage, speaking of great tributes, read a passage from his book, the tribute he gave at the service honoring the life and legacy at the Washington National Cathedral honoring the late, great Justice Thurgood Marshall.

So if you want to hear those two answers, go to the website, PBS.org, to hear what Vernon Jordan has to say about that.

His new book is called "Make it Plain: Standing Up and Speaking Out," a wonderful collection of some wonderful oratory, some wonderful speeches he's given down through the years. You'll want to add it to your collection.

Vernon Jordan, an honor to have you here, sir.

Jordan: Thank you.

Tavis: Good to see you.