Erykah Badu – “Window Seat”

Common performed for a packed house in Brooklyn last night at BAM, sponsored by Metro PCS. It was part of the Metro PCS 5 Boro Takeover Tour. The crowd was on their feet for the entire performance, rapping, dancing and jumping along with the conscious rap hottie, causing the floor to feel like it was about to cave in. Fan’s didn’t seem to mind though. Just good times and good music.

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BGG couldn’t let March, a.k.a. Women’s History Month, skirt by (pun intended) without a spotlight. So this month, our spotlight is on Barbara Jordan.

Jordan, a Houston native, set out for the northeast to attend law school at Boston University. After graduation from law school in 1959, she became licensed to practice law in both Massachusetts and Texas, which made her only the third African-American to be licensed in her home state.

But Jordan was a woman of many firsts. In 1966, after a long fought campaign and two previous losses in 1962 and 1964, Jordan won her seat in the Texas senate, making her the first African-American woman ever to serve in the state’s senate. In 1972, Jordan was elected to the United States House of Representatives, making her the first African-American woman from a Southern state to serve in the House. In 1976, she became the first African-American woman to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. In 1999, this speech garnered her the number 5 ranking in Top 100 American Speeches of the 20th Century. After her retirement from politics in 1979, she became an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Jordan was a lesbian with a partner of over 20 years, Nancy Earl. Earl was an educational psychologist and speechwriter. The two met on a camping trip in the late 1960s. Jordan never publicized her lesbian relationship. Her campaign advisers advised her to keep her sexual orientation discreet when she first started running for her Texas senate seat back in 1962. When she passed away in 1996, the Houston Chronicle made mention of her longtime relationship with Ms. Earl in her obituary.

Even in death, she still managed to pull off firsts. She became the first black woman to be interred in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.