Vernon Jordan may be best known to many Americans for his close relationship with President Bill Clinton. But Jordan was a longtime civil rights leader, an Atlanta native and Howard University–trained lawyer who helped desegregate the University of Georgia and went on to work for the NAACP, Southern Regional Council, Voter Education Project, United Negro College Fund, and National Urban League, where he served as president from 1971 to 1981.

[D]id you notice if you just sat there and marked his color away how much he looked like my younger brother Eddie?

When he assumed this last role, succeeding the legendary civil rights leader Whitney Young, Jordan came to the attention of President Richard Nixon, who discussed him in a June 1971 conversation with advisor Leonard Garment. The conversation reveals much about the Nixon administration's relationship to African American leaders and the Civil Rights movement in general, as the two men discuss the difficult position Congressman Charles Rangel and leaders such as Jordan have in their relationship to the Democratic Party. 

Nixon also waxes poetic about Jordan (as well as Rangel), and even says he looks like the president's own brother Eddie.

LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE CONVERSATION AT THE PRESIDENTIAL RECORDINGS DIGITAL EDITION

Jordan and Clinton: ‘Very much alike’

In addition to the Miller Center's Presidential Recordings Program, the Center's Presidential Oral History Program also offers insights about Jordan.

In the Bill Clinton Presidential History Project, Betty Curry remembers the relationship in conversation with the Miller Center's Russell Riley and James Young:

Curry: They were what I’d call “best buds.”I’ll never forget, it was early in the administration and I was having some problems at work. I said, “Vernon, I don’t know if I can deal with this or not.I’m having a problem.” I was mad at him when he finished, but he said, “You do whatever you have to, but you stay in that job.” I said to myself, Now, Vernon, you’re preaching one thing—So I sucked it in and kept on going. Vernon is a good person to talk to. He and the president, they’re two of a kind.

. . . 

Riley: You said they were best buds? Two people who are very much alike.

Currie: Very much alike.

Riley: How is that?

Currie: I’ll never forget, when Vernon was working with the transition with Warren, he asked Caroleen [Nord] and me to help type up a speech he was giving at a funeral. It was a hundred pages I think, maybe less. So Caroleen typed it the first time and then I proofed it, and then I helped her type it. It was so wonderful, so warm. I hadn’t worked with Clinton yet, but I said, “That’s the same sort of speech that Vernon would give, the same type, the same warmth.”

Young: I think Clinton learned a lot from Vernon.

Currie: I think so too.

Riley: How so?

Currie: I think politically. Vernon is a politician, although he’s not in politics. He’s a charmer, as is Clinton.

Riley: But sometimes people who are so much alike don’t get along very well.

Currie: I think Vernon is also smart enough to know that you may not get along, but you’re going to get along with—like he told me, you suck it up and you—but to me they do get along. And he would take his calls all the time.

Riley: Vernon was in New York the whole time?

Currie: No,Washington 90 percent of the time. He didn’t go to New York until after. I think it was after, I know he was there doing—

Young: He went to Lazard, that was a transition.

Currie: I think he could make more money outside than you could inside.

Riley: Sure.

Currie: You may not know, but the government doesn’t pay much at all. [laughing]

Riley: I’ve done so many of these interviews. It comes up.