Joseph A. Jordan Jr.

Joseph A. Jordan Jr. (1923 - 14 June 1991) was an African American lawyer and civil rights activist. He worked as a lawyer and judge and was part of the lawsuit heard before the Supreme Court of the United States that ended poll taxes.

Early life and education Jordan was raised in Norfolk, Virginia. He went to the Booker T. Washington High School and went on to the Virginia Union University. Jordan went on to earn a degree in sociology. Later, he studied labor law at New York University. When Jordan and another civil rights activist, Evelyn Thomas Butts, were restrained from picketing a supermarket for not hiring black people in high level jobs, Jordan fought the restraining order, but lost. Jordan was involved in several anti-segregation cases in 1961, 1962 and 1964 in Virginia. In November 1963, Butts hired him to sue the state for requiring a poll tax to vote. The case was dismissed by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in 1964.

When the case went before the Supreme Court, Jordan argued that the poll tax laws had successfully barred black people not only from voting, but from holding office. Jordan said, "Almost like a magic wand after the passage of this law, these poll tax laws, not a single Negro has sat in the Virginia General Assembly, and not a single Negro has held a single elected state office in the state of Virginia." In 1971, Jordan was the only black member of the city council. In 1972, he became the vice-mayor of Norfolk. In 1974, Jordan resigned as vice-mayor in protest, "saying the city is being run by the Norfolk Redevelopment Authority rather than City Council."

Jordan was appointed to the General District Court on July 1, 1977. He was one of only a few African American state judges at the time. The memorial was dedicated in 2000 and had been proposed in the 1970s by Jordan.