02.22.10

The Class Paper

Posted in Uncategorized at 3:30 am by Administrator

Some things make you smile. That’s exactly what I did when I found out my little niece, Katy, had written a class paper about Dr. John Henry Jordan, her great-great-grandfather, my great-grandfather. I was so pleased I just beamed into the phone as she told me about it. The conversation went something like this:
“Katy, whose idea was it for you to write a paper about John Henry Jordan: yours or your parents?”
“Um…”
She wasn’t sure when I asked, but my brother, Harold, tells me she came up with the idea all by her little self!
“What did your class think?”
“They liked it,” she told me.
“Where did you get the information from?”
“Your website,” she said.
I laughed at that. I didn’t even know she knew I had one.
“My dad showed it to me,” she explained.
I smiled again. I sometimes wonder what my great-grandfather, I like to refer to him as JHJ, would think of his family if he could see us now. He died at such a young age, he was only 42, and had no idea whether his then 12-year-old son, my grandfather, would marry much less have children and grandchildren of his own. From the loins of my grandfather, JHJ’s only son who survived infancy, were born four children, eight grandchildren, and ten great-grandchildren and counting. I realize my brother’s children are too young to fully comprehend what John Henry Jordan accomplished as the first black doctor in Coweta County, Georgia, near Atlanta. Someone I was talking to just yesterday asked me in what year he finished medical school. The person was shocked when I said 1896.
I am so proud of my eleven-year-old niece for wanting to explore a little fragment of his life at her young age (I didn’t write my first paper about my great-grandfather until I was in high school). I am also equally proud of her sister, Rachel, and her brother, Christopher. I’m sure my great-grandfather would be too.

02.06.10

Black History Month: New Jersey’s Oliver Randolph

Posted in Uncategorized at 2:21 am by Administrator

Thinking about Black History Month makes me proud when I consider all of the achievements African Americans have made for countless decades. One of them, Oliver Randolph, is someone I have come to know recently through the pages of history. He was the first African American to be admitted to the New Jersey State Bar in 1914. A graduate of Howard University Law School, Randolph lived in Newark and served in the New Jersey State Legislature and, in 1946, was appointed as a deputy in the New Jersey State Attorney General’s office. His signature appeared on the New Jersey Constitution, and he helped to pass important civil rights legislation, including the Anti-Lynching Law of the State of New Jersey.

While Randolph’s achievements were many, he also came from an accomplished family. His father was a longtime state legislator in Mississippi during Reconstruction, and his brother, Joseph, was the first black president of Claflin College in South Carolina (he was known as Uncle Joe in my family as he was married to my great-grandmother’s sister). I hope Oliver Randolph’s story, and that of his family members, continues to inspire people today. Happy Black History Month.