Senator David Jordan

from the New York Times, May 12, 2004 (see http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/national/12till.html?ex=1399694400&en=115665f0ba30b1f8&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND for the full article about the Emmett Till case: In Mississippi Town, an Unwelcome Past Calls, by Andrew Jacobs).

One of the area's most politically powerful men, State Senator David Jordan, is an African-American who has served in the Mississippi Senate since 1993.  He is also a member of the Greenwood City Council.  As the founder of the Voters League in Greenwood, he was once a frequent target of death threats by opponents of integration.

Mr. Jordan was one of the few African-Americans who attended the Bryant-Milam trial. He recalls the trial as a seminal moment in Leflore County's transformation and his own. The son of a sharecropper who was once slapped for failing to address a white man as "sir," Senator Jordan remembers the shock of seeing black and white newspapermen from across the country sharing the same Greenwood hotel during the trial. "Now that was a beacon of hope for us," he said.

Last year, after Mr. Jordan publicized his support for a black candidate for lieutenant governor, someone threw eggs at his wife's car. Over the past decade, the windows of his home have been broken several times; a video camera now stands sentinel over his front door.

"As long as you go with the status quo, things are all right," he said. "But when we push for change, the polarization comes again."