He soon journeyed to the Forty Acres with a small suitcase and a dark cloud of foreboding lingering over his head. Jordan’s hard work paid off when he was accepted to The University of Texas at Austin when it opened its doors to Black students in 1956. “I never considered architecture at the time, but the thought of making a good living really appealed to me.” Get into architecture so you can get paid,’” Jordan says. “My drafting teacher told me, ‘Son, you’re good in art, but you’re going to starve to death. To this day, he distinctly recalls the very moment when he found his path to architecture. “I wasn’t trying to be a bad guy, but the stolen groceries would have come out of my paycheck.”ĭetermined to make his parents proud, Jordan focused on his studies at the segregated Phillis Wheatley High School, where he discovered an affinity for drawing. “At the time, I only weighed 98 pounds and couldn’t fight them off, so I had to protect myself and my job,” Jordan recalls. Just another day in the life of a Black teenager in the 1950s. He fended them off with his three-wheeled delivery bike and continued on with his job. One incident that stands out in his memory occurred when a group of bullies attempted to steal his groceries and run him into a ditch. “They faced a lot of problems with harassment, and I wasn’t spared from those experiences.” “As a high-schooler, I had a job working for a grocery store owned by an Italian family,” Jordan says. Yet trouble had a way of finding him when he ventured into the white neighborhoods to deliver groceries. “Our parents always warned us that the only option under their roof was to succeed.” “My siblings and I didn’t have the option to fail,” says Jordan, who was raised in a large 12-sibling family. was taught at a young age to do well in school and avoid trouble. While growing up in a segregated neighborhood of Houston, Texas, Willie C. (far left) raises his horns with a group of Precursors during the 60th anniversary celebration for the first Black undergraduates to enter UT Austin in 1956.

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