Early Life and Education
Vernon Jordan was born in Georgia to Mary Jordan and Vernon E. Jordan Sr; he has a brother Windsor. He is the cousin of James Shaw, a musician who is professionally billed as "The Mighty Hannibal."
Jordan grew up with his family in Atlanta's segregated society during the 1950s. He was an honor graduate of David Tobias Howard High School. Rejected for a summer intern's job with an insurance company because of his race after his sophomore year in college, he earned money for a few summers for college by working as a chauffeur to the former city mayor Robert Maddox, then a banker. Jordan graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, in 1957. He earned a law degree at Howard University School of Law in 1960. He is a member of the Omega Psi Phi and Sigma Pi Phi fraternities.
Read more about this topic: Vernon Jordan
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“I could be, I discovered, by turns stern, loving, wise, silly, youthful, aged, racial, universal, indulgent, strict, with a remarkably easy and often cunning detachment ... various ways that an adult, spurred by guilt, by annoyance, by condescension, by loneliness, deals with the prerogatives of power and love.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“The great end of life is not knowledge, but action. What men need is as much knowledge as they can assimilate and organize into a basis for action; give them more and it may become injurious. One knows people who are as heavy and stupid from undigested learning as other are from over-fulness of meat and drink.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.”
—Jean Piaget (1896–1980)