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Vernon Can Read!: A Memoir
by Vernon E. Jordan Jr. with
Annette Gordon-Reed
Public Affairs, October 2001
$26.00, ISBN 1-891-62069-X

When Vernon Jordan suddenly became a household name--large and in-charge--as Bill Clinton's man out front during the darkest days of scandal and innuendo, those who hadn't followed his career probably wondered how this came to be. How had this particular black man from outside the administration become the ultimate insider -- the "fixer" for a white southerner, albeit one that many consider an honorary black man?

Unfortunately, this memoir does not go that far. It essentially stops in the 1980s, when, as Jordan puts it, "I began a chapter of my life that is still being written." However, the book does provide an intimate look at how he got there and why. As such, it is part political science primer, part civil rights textbook and part motivational tool.

With the help of Annette Gordon-Reed, a veteran author and law professor, Jordan portrays himself persuasively and forthrightly as a man who knew where to be, whom to cultivate, and how to conduct himself with integrity at precisely the right moments in recent American history. It comes as no surprise that he knew and befriended some of the leading figures of our time, including Clinton and Jimmy Carter long before they were presidents.

It would be easy to assume that he was a man out for himself. Now, in the senior ranks of an investment company and a law firm, Jordan makes it abundantly clear that his intent was to go where he did--whether it was a voter registration drive or a corporate board retreat--and to press for the advancement of the race and the rights of all. In one anecdote, he tells a young aide in the Nixon White House, who chides him for socializing there: "I'm playing tennis with John Ehrlichman so you can continue to be a $20,000-a-year militant." Jordan, who later survived a white supremacist's gunshot, does not justify himself to anyone.

Young Vernon grew up comfortably enough as the son of a caterer and a postman, who gave him unflinching love. He credits his family for instilling his drive and faith. Working alongside his indomitable mother and serving at parties in Atlanta's wealthiest homes also gave him an early education into the folkways of white society. (The title comes from a segregationist banker's exclamation of surprise that his summer chauffeur, Jordan, not only read to pass the time, but also spent winters as a student at a white university up North.)

From there, Jordan plots his life in careful steps to best effect the course of revolution at any given time--from the courts of rural Georgia to the helm of the National Urban League for a pivotal decade, and then on to corporate boards and major law firms.

Gordon-Reed's work is smooth and invisible, convincing in the first person as Jordan speaks eloquently for himself. It is a worthy follow-up to Reed's historical analysis, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (University Press of Virginia, April 1998, $13.95, ISBN 0-813-91833-2, paperback).

--Angela Dodson is a contributing editor for BIBR who lives in New Jersey.