One of Mississippi’s longest-serving current state senators, who published a memoir about how education helped him move from picking cotton to teaching science to making laws at the state Capitol, is resigning.
Democratic Sen. David Jordan of Greenwood is a retired educator who has served in the state Senate since 1993. His district serves parts of Leflore, Panola and Tallahatchie counties.
“I hate to leave, but my wife of 71 years … she needs me home,” Jordan, 92, told his colleagues during a special legislative session Wednesday. He said he will resign by the end of June.
As a member of the Legislative Black Caucus, Jordan has pushed to protect voting rights and increase funding for Mississippi’s three historically Black universities. He was also instrumental in legislators’ decision in 2020 to remove a Confederate battle emblem that had been on the state flag since 1894.
Senators gave Jordan standing ovations Wednesday as they adopted a resolution honoring his service.
“Today, we gather to honor a man whose life and career have been a testament to unwavering dedication, profound wisdom and an unyielding commitment to justice,” said Senate Democratic Leader Derrick Simmons of Greenville.
Jordan’s parents were sharecroppers in Leflore County near Greenwood, and Mississippi was strictly segregated during his early years.
Simmons said Jordan has been an inspiration and “a pillar of strength during a time of profound change” in Mississippi and the United States.
Jordan helped secure $150,000 from the state for a 9-foot-tall bronze statue of Emmett Till that was unveiled in Greenwood in October 2022.
Till, 14, was Black and had traveled from his home in Chicago in August 1955 to spend time with relatives in the Mississippi Delta. Wheeler Parker, who was 16 at the time and had traveled with his cousin Till from Chicago, said he heard Till whistle at a white woman shopkeeper outside a country store in Money.
White men kidnapped Till from his great uncle’s rural home four nights later. They tortured and shot the teenager, then tossed his body into the Tallahatchie River, weighted down by a cotton gin fan.
The lynching became a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement after Till’s mother insisted on an open-casket funeral in Chicago and Jet magazine published a photo of his mutilated body.
In his 2014 memoir, “David L. Jordan: From the Mississippi Cotton Fields to the State Senate,” Jordan recalled being a college freshman in 1955 and going to the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner to watch part of the trial of the two white men charged in the killing of Till. An all-white jury quickly acquitted J.W. Milam and his half-brother Roy Bryant, the husband of shopkeeper Carolyn Bryant.
“I could tell by the actions of the jury that they were not serious,” Jordan said in a 2017 video interview in the Florida State University archives.
Jordan has long been active in the Greenwood Voters League, which works to encourage Black participation in elections.
He became one of the first Black members of the Greenwood City Council when he was elected to that office in 1985. He served 36 years on the council before choosing not to seek reelection in 2021.
He was able to serve in two elected offices simultaneously because Mississippi law allowed one person to hold two offices in the same branch of government. The council seat and the Senate seat are both in the legislative branch.
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