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Writing Frame Form
Just like a picture hung on the wall looks the best when it is displayed in a frame that “fits” the picture,
so too is writing at its best when it is written to fit inside its “frame.” The “frame” for writing consists of
elements of the writing situation—your audience, your purpose, the genre in which you’re writing, and
the time period in which you’re writing. These four elements compose a “frame” that allow you to craft
the most effective piece of writing possible for the particular writing situation which you are attempting
to address.
For each piece you write in this class you will be asked to identify the “frame” in which you’re writing.
Answer the following questions:
1. Who is your audience—in other words, who are you trying to write to? Be SPECIFIC! Don’t just
say “general audience.”
I am writing to my ePortfolio audience, which includes the students and faculty of the Honors
Program, prospective schools, and potential employers.
2. What is your purpose—in other words, what effect do you want to have on your reader?
I want my readers to understand that Barbara Jordan’s speech is significant to Black American
History because she promotes the equal application of the Constitution and because the
influence of her speech proves that Black Americans can have the power to influence the
decisions of society, particularly the decisions of national importance.
3. What genre are you writing in? What are some of the conventions of this genre that might be
important to consider as you begin your writing process?
For this assignment, I am writing an argumentative essay. Argumentative writing would involve
the crafting of a specific claim, reputable sources and evidence to support the claim, an analysis
of my research, and perhaps a personal anecdote or a discussion of what it all means to me and
what it means to the Black American culture today.
4. How is your topic relevant to your audience NOW in the time period in which you’re writing?
Barbara Jordan’s speech is ingrained in America’s rhetorical history because it paints a very clear
picture of the experience of a race and its change over time, the application of the Constitution
and how it would cease to matter if its provisions are ignored, her skills as an orator, and her
impact as a representative.
5. Given your audience and purpose, what kinds of evidence/support will you need/use to
develop your purpose convincingly for your audience?
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To effectively convince my audience of my claim, I must have direct quotations from Jordan’s
speech, context of the Watergate scandal, research of Barbara Jordan’s Ethos, and references to
the actual provisions of impeachment from the U.S. Constitution.
6. How will you use YOUR own voice in this piece of writing? Why is YOUR voice important in this
piece of writing?
I can only make my claim my own by writing in my perspective. As we’ve discussed in class and
read in the assigned article, my claim would differentiate itself from Jordan’s and make known
to my readers that I personally believe in such a claim through evidence I find convincing. My
introductions of Jordan and Nixon are written in third-person limited I suppose (I tried to stick
with my summarization of facts and simply recalling events to set the context of Nixon’s
impeachment hearings).
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Christina Sablan
Dr. Sarah Lushia
WR122 Honors
30 October 2014
Essay 1.0 Final Draft
Barbara Jordan’s Statement on the Articles of Impeachment
In a society dominated by white males, Barbara Jordan has taken major strides as a Black
American woman and a politician hailing from the south so shortly after the Reconstruction Era
had transformed the Southern states. Barbara Jordan grew up in Houston, Texas’ segregated
Fifth Ward and attended the segregated Phyllis Wheatley High School, where she was inspired to
become an attorney. She then attended Texas Southern University, a black college that the Texas
Legislature had created in an effort to avoid the racial integration of the University of Texas.
Three years after graduating magna cum laude at the Texas Southern University, she received
her law degree, as one of the only two black women of her class, from the law school of Boston
University. Having passed both the Massachusetts and Houston bar exams, Jordan returned to
Houston’s Fifth Ward to open up a law office (“Barbara”).
Barbara Jordan emerged as a public figure in the 1970’s as she was the first African
American to be elected in the Texas Senate after reconstruction, the first black female from the
south to be elected to the United States House of Representatives, and the first black female to
deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 1976. She was also a
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notable recipient of numerous honors such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and upon her
death, she became the first Black woman to be buried in the Texas State Cemetery (“Barbara”).
A stark illustration of Jordan’s influence was brought to the nation’s attention when she,
as the first African American woman in congress from the South, was positioned to speak to a
generation on the brink of change and national crisis (Holmes 4). In 1972, when the Vietnam
War had left the United States severely divided, incumbent President Richard Nixon and his key
advisors sought to run an aggressive and impetuous presidential campaign, employing evasive
acts of illegal espionage. On June 17, 1972, members of Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the
President were arrested inside the Democratic National Committee office while attempting to
steal top-secret documents and wiretap office phones. In an attempt to cover up his involvement
in the operation, President Nixon bribed the burglars, destroyed evidence and intercepted the
FBI’s investigation of the crime, and used his position to fire staff members unwilling to
cooperate. When news of Nixon’s involvement in the scandal fully surfaced, he resigned in
August of 1974 (“Watergate”).
During Nixon’s impeachment hearing on July 25, 1974, a televised, fifteen minute
opening statement was delivered by Barbara Jordan, now a member of the House Judiciary
Committee (“Barbara”). In the beginning of her speech, she recalls the beginning of the
Preamble to the Constituion, “We, the people,” and how she was not initially included in it. But
she reminds us that, through lengthy and contended processes of amendment, interpretation, and
court decision, African Americans are now finally a part of that “We, the people.” She assures us
that her “faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit
here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the
Constitution” (“American”).
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Her speech includes a series of comparisons between the criteria for impeachment as
articulated in the Constitution and Nixon’s alleged crimes. Without actually condemning Nixon
or stating that he must be impeached, she suggests, through the criteria she clearly cites during
her speech, that the Constitution be abandoned should Nixon’s actions be overlooked by the law.
She also offers a firm defense of the Constitution and its system of checks and balances.
This historical occasion, in which a southern black female politician is asked to impart
her opinion on a trial to charge a white male of misconduct, and not just any white male but the
President of the United States, came across clearly to me as a signifier of change. Barbara
Holmes, author of Jordan’s biography “A Private Woman in Public Spaces,” states that the
Watergate scandal “had become a national moral crisis at the same time that the public
discontent of ethnic minorities, women, young adults, and radical and conservative factions was
at a peak (“Holmes 4”). While tasked with this bold statement during this tumultuous period in
the US, one could easily imagine Jordan’s audience responding in a negative way towards her
claims or suggestions; however, the reality of the reception of Jordan’s statement was that,
according to Holmes, “the nation was stunned by her bold presence and centered constitutional
arguments. Few missed the irony of the moment. An African American woman embraced and
defended a constitution written by slaveholding nation-founders who intended to exclude her
from its protections.” I believe Barbara Jordan’s Statement on the Articles of Impeachment was
significant to Black American History because she defended the Constitution by advocating
equal application of its provisions, and she proved, as a representative of Black Americans, that
she could substantially influence society at a national level.
The profound influence of Jordan’s statement indicates a cusp of change: a racially
ambivalent nation gave objective credence and support to a black female’s argument against one
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of the most powerful white public officials and thus helped lead Richard Nixon to resignation,
the first President in the history of the Republic to resign from office. The acclaimed rhetoric and
integrity Jordan gained from this speech was not just momentarily convincing, as she was asked
to deliver the keynote address two years later at the 1976 Democratic National Convention
(“Barbara”).
From my interpretation, Jordan is inquiring in other words, “Now that I am included in
the Constitution, will its provisions dictate or apply to its white citizens with the same pertinent
force that it placed upon its black citizens? If so, may the supreme law of US Constitution allow
democracy to prevail. If not, let us discard such useless articles, regardless of the solemnness and
faith I maintain for its functions.” “If the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the
United States will not reach the offenses charged here,” says Jordan near the end of her speech,
“then perhaps that 18th-century Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th-century paper
shredder!” (“American”). What would the outright subversion of the Constitution by Presidential
maladministration mean for the grueling and painful journey that African Americans have taken
in the process of becoming more than property but citizens? Futile.
If I were to take even a cursory glance at our nation’s history of segregation, I would see
a violent course of resistance to efforts for equality and integration. The Black Codes and Jim
Crow laws enacted in the South, for example, restricted civil rights and civil liberties of African
Americans in response to the nation’s emancipation of slaves (“Reynolds”). Considering
Jordan’s background and the extent to which she had pursued her education and political career
in the face of segregation (and the violent agitation that often follows integration), it is more than
flooring the notion that one who pledges solemn allegiance to the Constitution after finally being
included would opt to discard the text (“Barbara”). Her powerful statement, though delivered so
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subtly, illustrates Jordan’s faith in the Constitution through the irony in that she plays an unlikely
defender of precepts written with intentioned exclusion. From her upbringing in Houston’s
segregated Fifth Ward, her attendance at a segregated high school and undergraduate college, her
successful pursuit of a political career that allowed her to achieve many firsts for Black
Americans, Black American women, and Black American women from the south, it is indicative
that Jordan truly harnessed her citizenship and inclusion in the Constitution.
I personally find that Jordan offered me, a spectator of a very different generation and
race, a cultural lens through which the importance of the Constitution’s provisions is shone under
a different light. I have experienced nothing but the inclusion the Constitution offers its citizens,
so putting myself in her position feels unfamiliar and painful. Painful in that I would not know
how to react to the committee that chooses not to impeach a president who so overtly breaks
code(s) of conduct. Though an unlikely courier, Jordan enlightened me with a message so much
more profound and complex than a simple statement of articles to consider. To be an inquisitor
like Jordan, I cannot assume that being under the protection of the Constitution means the equal
application of its laws, nor the equal consideration to citizens of different classes.
Though Black American history felt the first wave of impact from Jordan’s speech
(which was even more intense as her very presence in the House Judiciary Committee lends her
interpretation more weight), its significance also resonates in Mainstream American history. The
eloquence and influence of her speech has, since it had been first delivered, transcended far
beyond the attention of Black Americans. She illustrated for the audience of her speech the
image of a Doctrine of principles, with rights freshly inherited by Black Americans and with
interpretations that have afforded their ancestors the darkest oppression. She demonstrates that
the Constitution truly deserves to be maintained, to be defended. She describes this image as one
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with complete allegiance to its fundamental principles, and as one with resolute understanding of
what it means to be and not to be included in it.
To ignore the staunch and unfaltering reason in Jordan’s speech would demean the
document elicited by our founding father’s intent of fairness and democracy. Not only would it
be a collapse of Democracy but it rids the Constitution of purpose. Jordan’s speech proves
significant to Black American history because if the offenses were left uncharged by the
impeachment provisions, then the result would prove the unfair application of its principles. This
would mean the tragic history of a people, whose very lives were controlled in society by the
fundamental liberties they were not allowed, had occurred for naught, if the Constitution’s
articles may be so easily null and voided.
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Works Cited
“American Rhetoric: Barbara Jordan – Statement on House Judiciary Proceedings to Impeach
President Nixon.” American Rhetoric: Barbara Jordan – Statement on House Judiciary
Proceedings to Impeach President Nixon. American Rhetoric, n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2014.
“Barbara C. Jordan.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 15 Oct.2014.
Holmes, Barbara Ann. A Private Woman in Public Spaces: Barbara Jordan’s speeches on Ethics,
Public Religion, and Law. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity International, 2000. Print.
Reynolds, John S. Reconstruction in South Carolina: 1865-1877. New York: Negro U, 1969.
Print.
“Watergate Scandal.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.