Representative Barbara Jordan during the Impeachment hearings of President Nixon, July 1974 (b/w photo)

Barbara Charline Jordan (February 21, 1936 – January 17, 1996) American politician and a leader of the Civil Rights movement. She was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction and in 1972 was elected to Congress, the first woman to represent Texas in the House in her own right; made an influential televised speech before the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment hearings of President Nixon in 1974; Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a Republican U.S. representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961; the Watergate scandal was a political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s as a result of the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement. The scandal eventually led to the resignation of Richard Nixon, the President of the United States, on August 9, 1974, the only resignation of a U.S. President. The scandal also resulted in the indictment, trial, conviction and incarceration of 43 people, including dozens of Nixon's top administration officials.