For David Lee Jordan, the son of a sharecropper, life has been defined by hard work, adversity and a devotion to the principle of equal justice for all.
His autobiography, “David L. Jordan: From the Mississippi Cotton Fields to the State Senate, a Memoir” chronicles his journey to the halls of political power in Greenwood and Jackson.
The book was co-written by Dr. Robert L. Jenkins, professor emeritus of history at Mississippi State University.
A signing has been tentatively scheduled for 3 p.m. March 22 at Turnrow Books. Jordan said he signed about 30 copies Thursday at the store.
He also was scheduled to sign copies and speak on the book in Natchez on Friday and Saturday as part of the 25th annual Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration.
Born into the cotton field
Jordan, 79, said his earliest memories were of his family working in the cotton field.
“In those days, everything went to the cotton fields, even the dogs,” he said.
“When I was 2 years old, they carried me. I had a brother who was a couple of years older than me; he was 4. Mama made him a pillow case and cut holes in it. He would pick around.”
Jordan’s mother, Elizabeth, would place cotton sacks atop the plants to create a small patch of shade for her baby boy, he said.
“When I started hollering — they didn’t wean children like they do now — Mama would come and nurse me. Then she’d go back to picking with the rest of the family,” Jordan said.
Most days during harvest season, the family would be in the field before sunup, he said.
“We’d pick three bales a week. We’d start picking Monday about 5:30 in the morning and picked until after sundown,” he said. “By Tuesday, we’d have a bale.”
Later, as a boy, Jordan would take the finished bale to the bookkeeper on the C.S. Whittington Plantation. There, he first felt the sting of racism.
“The bookkeeper would call me ‘Little Ni**** Jordan,’” he said.
Cotton picking by hand is hard work. The open bolls harm the cuticles and fingers. Jordan said his older sister, Viola, and older brother, Andrew, were the best pickers in the family and could pick 400 to 500 pounds a day.
When Andrew went into the U.S. Army in December 1952, the family made 20 bales of cotton. After C.S. Whittington, the plantation owner, settled the accounts for the year, the family made just $350 for a year’s work.
Jordan said there wasn’t any questioning of the owner’s calculations: “You took his word for it.”
The Ellis School, the one-room school Jordan attended, ran from the first of December to April 15. School was tough, and teachers would “whip you everywhere but in your face,” he said.
He described Professor Ellis, the principal of the school, as a “drill sergeant.” When an assignment was given, the students were expected to be able to perform no matter what, he said.
“If you stood up and couldn’t read, he’d just pull you aside and whip you before the whole class,” he said.
Jordan, who later became an educator himself, said the atmosphere, while tough, was conducive to learning.
“It taught us how to listen. You better learn to listen,” he said.
Early work experience
When Jordan was in the sixth grade, he began working part-time at Malouf’s Store, where his mother made $15 a week.
Because his father, Cleveland Jordan, was a sharecropper, “in the wintertime, there was nothing to do,” he said “We needed more money.”
Although skinny, Jordan showed his mettle by carrying heavy buckets of cement up a ladder to where brick masons were working.
“I’d climb with one hand. I made a lot of trips,” he said.
In the end, Jordan was making $2.50 a day, which he turned over to his mother. She in turn would give him back $1 for Jordan to share with his brother, Andrew.
Jordan made a decision to focus on work and not on his education. In May, he flunked sixth grade. He recalled that his father told him, “You’re going back to school. I don’t care what happens.”
Greenwood bound
When Jordan’s sister, Viola, started going to Stone Street High School — at that time the city’s black high school — he began making the daily trek to Greenwood as a seventh-grader.
At the time school started, right after Labor Day, he was needed to help bring the crop in. In all, the family harvested 40 bales of cotton that year. When Jordan showed up back at school on Dec. 1, during the midst of semester exams, the teacher was surprised to see him.
“The teacher said, “Who are you? I don’t have you on my roll.’” Jordan replied, “I’ve been picking cotton. I live in the county, and we’ve just finished.”
The teacher reluctantly put his name back on the roll.
In May, he failed the seventh grade. After two years in the sixth grade and two years in the seventh, he didn’t intend to fail again.
By the time he entered the ninth grade, the family had moved to town. While at Stone Street, Jordan began dating the former Christine Bell, who was two years ahead of him. The two, who were naturally attracted to each other, even shared the same birthday, April 3.
They married in a civil ceremony on June 9, 1954.
Emmett Till
Jordan, after securing a dishwashing job at Greenwood’s Holiday Inn in 1955, began studying at Mississippi Vocational College, which is now known as Mississippi Valley State University.
Jordan was in an orientation class at the Itta Bena school when the body of Emmett Till was discovered in the Tallahatchie River.
Till, a 14-year-old youngster from Chicago, had been abducted and tortured after allegedly whistling at Carolyn Bryant at the Bryant Grocery and Meat Market in Money.
When Roy Bryant, the husband of Carolyn Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, went to trial for Till’s abduction and murder in Sumner in the fall of 1955, Jordan attended the trial as part of a school assignment.
The trial drew worldwide attention and helped galvanize the civil rights movement.
Jordan said he, his brother Andrew, Samuel Sampson and T.J. Harrison drove to Sumner to watch it. He remembered seeing Mamie Till, Till’s mother, as she made her way to the courthouse, accompanied by U.S. Rep. Charles Diggs of Detroit.
Jordan overheard a white reporter say, “‘I didn’t know we had any ni**** Congressmen.’”
He recalled the testimony of C.A. Miller, the funeral director at Century Funeral Home of Greenwood, who had handled Till’s body, about what he saw.
“He was sweating profusely. They interrogated him for about 45 minutes,” Jordan said.
He said a rumor was circulating that Till had been seen in Chicago after the body had been pulled from the Tallahatchie River. However, Miller’s testimony positively identified Till by a ring he was wearing. The ring had belonged to Till’s father, Jordan said.
After a few days, the all-white jury, “just going through the motions,” acquitted Roy Bryant and Milam, Jordan said.
Afterward, Jordan said, “We made our report to the professor. They didn’t believe we went, but we told it straight with so much enthusiasm.” Still, they received no grade.
Shortly after the trial, Bryant and Milam confessed to Look magazine that they had killed Till.
Putting pieces together
Jordan said work on his autobiography advanced slowly over the course of five years.
While in Jackson, serving as a state senator, he would work on the chapters each night in his hotel room.
“I’d write on different paper and bring it home. Chris would clean my office and misplace it, and I’d have to start all over again,” Jordan said.
Finally, Jordan said, “I just bought me a big old bag. I said, ‘This is where I’m going to keep everything I need, and I want until I get this thing done.’”
nContact Bob Darden at 581-7239 or bdarden@gwcommonwealth.com.
