Make It Plain: Standing Up and Speaking Out - Paperback

by Vernon Jordan (Author), Lee A. Daniels (With)

Black Americans have always relied on the oral tradition -- storytelling, preaching, and speechmaking -- to assert their rights and preserve and pass on their history and culture. In the pulpit, courtroom, or cotton field, they have understood the power of words, distinctively delivered, to educate and inspire.

Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., one of the nation's finest speakers, imbibed this tradition as a young man and has given it his own unique inflection from his work on the civil rights front lines, to the National Urban League, to positions of influence at the highest level of business and politics. A friend and confidant to presidents, Jordan has never forgotten the men and women -- from Ruby Hurley to Wiley Branton to Gardner C. Taylor to Martin Luther King, Jr. -- whose oratorical skill in service to social justice deeply influenced him. Their examples and voices, reflected in Vernon's own, make this book both a history and an embodiment of black speech at its finest: Full of emotion, controlled force, righteous indignation, love of country, and awe in front of the God-given challenges ahead.

Author Biography

Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. is a senior managing director of Lazard Frès & Co. LLC in New York. He was previously president and chief executive officer of the National Urban League, executive director of the United Negro College Fund, Inc., and director of the Voter Education Project of the Southern Regional Council. He served as chairman of the Clinton Presidential Transition Team in 1992 and is senior counsel at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP.