DR. ABIGAIL JORDAN
FOUNDER OF THE CONSORTIUM OF DOCTORS, LTD.

Tribute and Honor To Founder of Consortium of Doctors, Ltd 

Article by Jason Peevey, Written February 2004 from the University of Georgia, Alumni Magazine, SOUND the ARCH

Fighting the good fight
Her grandfather came to America on a slave ship. Her mother was nearly killed trying to vote. The Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in her family’s yard. And she endured unpleasant confrontations with students and faculty while studying at UGA. 

All of this, however, was merely a prelude to Abigail Jordan’s greatest challenge - driving the movement to erect a monument to slaves in Savannah, even contributing more than $100,000 of her own money to the project. 

Family history has played a vital role in Jordan’s life, which has been dominated by two themes - education and a struggle for equality.

In the 1800s Jordan’s maternal grandfather "played dead" and escaped after coming to the country on a slave ship. Slavery was abolished when her grandfather was 12, but the runaway didn’t know until a white woman took him in, later making arrangements for him to receive an education. 

Jordan never met her grandfather, but said, "Slavery is something I heard about in my home almost every day." Jordan’s mother, who earned the equivalent of a two-year degree, served as a role model. 

As a child, Jordan accompanied her mother to the Wilcox County Courthouse. "She knew they would not let her vote hut she went anyway. They turned her away, and as we left a white man stuck his foot out. My mother had the presence of mind to release my hand before she fell all the way down those marble steps. I was terrified and thought my mother was dead." 

The Ku Klux Klan retaliated with a cross burning in their yard, and the family fled to Savannah. Jordan was sent to a private high school in Albany and graduated from Albany State University with a degree in education. She earned a master’s in education at Atlanta University and after marrying and having a child of her own, returned to Savannah and worked for a federally funded education program on reading at Savannah State University.

It was her work with reading programs that led her to visit a class at UGA. When a UGA professor challenged Jordan to pursue a doctorate, she accepted. "I wanted him to know I was qualified," she said.

She commuted most days from Savannah to Athens and said fellow students tried to prevent her from parking on campus. When she complained to UGA President Fred Davison, he gave up his parking space for Jordan.