June Jordan

June Jordan was born on July 9, 1936 in Harlem, New York. She was a professor, writer and activist. She became involved in the Civil Rights Movement in 1964. She intensified her activism, joining the Freedom Riders to Baltimore.

Jordan worked with W.R. Buckminster Fuller on an environmental redesign project for New York's East Side. This project led to the article "Urban Redesign," for which she and Fuller won the 1971 Prix de Rome prize for environmental design. His Own Where, a 1972 National Book Award nominee, draws upon Jordan's urban planning experience in a novel that also advocates the power, lyricism, and validity of Black English.

Jordan's work in the 1990s has continued to be a balance of poetry and essay. She published two collections of essays that address issues of race, global politics, capitalism, and sexuality. These later works celebrate the power of language to not only speak injustice but to create truth and freedom. She has shared her skill and talent as a writer and teacher in places ranging from children's workshops in Brooklyn to New York's City College, Sarah Lawrence and Yale Universities. Since 1989, she has been a professor of African American studies and women's studies at the University of California at Berkeley where she ran the Poetry for the People program. She was also a columnist for The Progressive.

Jordan has received numerous honors and awards, including a 1969-1970 Rockefeller grant for creative writing, a Yado fellowship in 1979, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1982, and the Achievement Award for International Reporting from the National Association of Black Journalists in 1984. Jordan also won the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writers Award from 1995 to 1998; the Ground Breakers-Dream Makers award from The Woman's Foundation in 1994; she has been included in the Who's Who in America since 1984; she received the Chancellor's Distinguished Lectureship from the University of California at Berkeley, and the PEN Center USA West Freedom to Write Award, 1991. These awards just name a few of the honors she has received throughout her lifetime. Through her writing Jordan has worked to oppose discrimination, prejudice and oppression. She has promoted understanding and tolerance as an activist for human rights. Her incredible life’s work is a true inspiration to all people.

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