June Jordan facts for kids

Quick facts for kids June Jordan
Born	June Millicent Jordan (1936-07-09)July 9, 1936 Harlem, New York, U.S.
Died	June 14, 2002(2002-06-14) (aged 65) Berkeley, California, U.S.
Occupation	Writer, teacher, activist
Alma mater	Barnard College
Period	1969–2002
Genre	African-American literature, LGBT literature
Subject	Civil rights, Feminism, Bisexual/LGBT rights movement
Notable works	Who Look at Me (1969); Civil Wars (1981); I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky (1995); His Own Where (2010)
Spouse	Michael Meyer (married 1955, divorced 1965)
Children	Christopher David Meyer

June Millicent Jordan (July 9, 1936 – June 14, 2002) was an American poet, essayist, teacher, and activist. She used her writing to explore important topics. These included gender, race, immigration, and how people are shown in society.

Jordan strongly believed in using Black English in her writing and poems. She taught others to see it as a real language. She felt it was a vital way to express Black culture.

In 2019, Jordan was honored on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor. This wall is part of the Stonewall National Monument.

June Jordan's Early Life

June Jordan was born in 1936 in Harlem, New York. She was the only child of Granville Ivanhoe Jordan and Mildred Maude Fisher. Her parents were immigrants from Jamaica and Panama. Her father worked for the USPS. Her mother was a part-time nurse.

When June was five, her family moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, New York. June said her father shared his love of books with her. She started writing her own poems at age seven.

June wrote about her childhood in her 2000 book, Soldier: A Poet's Childhood. She also wrote an essay called "For My American Family." In it, she talked about the challenges of growing up with immigrant parents. Her parents had big dreams for her future. June remembered her father telling her: "There was a war against colored people, I had to become a soldier."

June started school in the New York City public school system. She went to P.S. 26 elementary school. At age 12, she attended Brooklyn's Midwood High School for a year. Then she went to Northfield Mount Hermon School. This was a special prep school in New England. Both schools had mostly white students.

June spent her school years in a mostly white environment. But this helped her build her identity as a Black American and a writer. In 1953, June graduated from high school. She then enrolled at Barnard College in New York City.

June later shared her feelings about Barnard College in her 1981 book, Civil Wars. She wrote that no one taught her about Black authors or women thinkers. She felt that what she learned did not help her understand her own background. It also did not show her how to change the problems faced by Black people in America.

Because she felt disconnected from the school's focus, June left Barnard without graduating. She became a poet and activist when more Black female authors were starting to share their voices.

June Jordan's Personal Life

While at Barnard College, June met Michael Meyer. He was a student at Columbia University. They married in 1955 when June was 19. She later went with him to the University of Chicago. There, she studied anthropology. She also enrolled in the university but soon returned to Barnard. She stayed there until 1957.

In 1958, June gave birth to their only child, Christopher David Meyer. June and Michael divorced in 1965. June raised their son by herself.

After the Harlem Riots of 1964, June felt a lot of anger. She wrote that she was "filled with hatred for everything and everyone white." But she realized this feeling would make her lose her way. She decided to write with love from then on. She also openly shared that she was bisexual in her writing. She refused to hide this, even when it was not widely accepted.

Her Career as a Writer and Teacher

June Jordan's first published book was Who Look at Me (1969). It was a collection of poems for children. She published 27 more books during her lifetime. One book, Some of Us Did Not Die: Collected and New Essays, was being printed when she passed away. Two more books were published after her death. These were Directed By Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (2005) and a reissued poetry collection she edited, SoulScript (1970).

June was also an essay writer, a newspaper columnist, a novelist, and a biographer. She wrote the words for the musical/opera I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky. John Adams composed the music, and Peter Sellars produced it. June said she wrote the entire opera script in just six weeks.

June started teaching in 1967 at the City College of New York. From 1968 to 1978, she taught at Yale University, Sarah Lawrence College, and Connecticut College. She became the director of The Poetry Center at SUNY at Stony Brook. She was an English professor there from 1978 to 1989. From 1989 to 2002, she was a full professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She taught in the English, Women's Studies, and African American Studies departments.

June Jordan was known as "the Poet of the People." At Berkeley, she started the "Poetry for the People" program in 1991. This program aimed to inspire students to use poetry to express themselves. June explained that the program grew from her experiences as a teacher and poet. It was the result of daily successes and challenges in the classroom.

June created three main guidelines for the program. These were published with her students' writings in 1995. The book was called June Jordan's Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint. She was not only an activist and poet, but she also wrote books for children.

Her Ideas and Activism

June Jordan strongly believed in using (AAVE), or Black English. She saw it as a true expression of her culture. She encouraged young Black writers to use it in their work. Her own published poems, like Dry Victories (1972), New Life (1975), and Kimako's Story (1981), continued to influence young writers.

In her essay "Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan," June criticized how Black English was often looked down upon. She said that "white English" was called "Standard English." She pointed out that in other countries, students can learn in their tribal language. But in America, students had to use only "White forms of 'English.'"

June shared how she worked with her students to understand Black English. She helped them see its structure as a language, not just a broken version of another. Her students created guidelines for Black English.

June's dedication to Black English was clear in her work. She wrote that Black English has "life, voice, and clarity." These qualities create a special Black value system that she wanted to keep.

June also wrote about complex political issues. She was passionate about women's rights and Black issues. She combined her personal experiences with these topics in her poetry, essays, plays, and children's books. Her writing offered both understanding and guidance. Her essay "Declaration of an Independence I Would Just As Soon Not Have" was in the 1992 book Daughters of Africa.

Before she died, June was asked about the role of a poet. She replied that a poet's role is to earn the trust of people who know you work with words.

Understanding Privilege

In her 1982 essay "Report from the Bahamas," June Jordan wrote about her travels. She thought about how people connect based on race, class, and gender. This essay has become very important in studies about women and society.

June often wrote about the idea of privilege. She talked about it when discussing race, class, and gender. She believed that all forms of unfair treatment should be seen equally. She felt that no one should have special advantages or "privilege" over others.

Connecting with Others

In "Report from the Bahamas," June described the challenges of understanding different experiences. She found that sharing the same race, class, or gender was not always enough for people to connect. She wrote that these factors "collapse... whenever you try to use them as automatic concepts of connection." They might show common problems, but not always common bonds.

June thought about her interactions with Black Bahamian women. She noticed that they were often involved in buying and selling. She wrote: "We are not particularly women anymore; we are parties to a transaction designed to set us against each other."

June also shared stories from her teaching. She told how an Irish woman helped a South African student who was in a difficult home situation. This act of kindness surprised June. It was different from her past experiences of facing prejudice in her own neighborhood.

June's essay ends by saying that we must actively build connections with others. We cannot just assume connections exist based on shared backgrounds. She wrote: "The ultimate connection must be the need that we find between us."

June Jordan's Legacy

June Jordan passed away from breast cancer on June 14, 2002. She was 65 years old. Before her death, she finished Some of Us Did Not Die. This was her seventh collection of essays and her 27th book. It was published after she died. In it, she wrote about how her early marriage led her to become a social activist.

In 2004, a school in San Francisco was named after her. It is called the June Jordan School for Equity. The first ninth-grade class chose her name.

In June 2019, June Jordan was one of the first fifty "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes" honored. She was inducted onto the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor. This wall is at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City. The monument is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history.

Honors and Awards

June Jordan received many honors and awards throughout her life. Some of these include:

• A Rockefeller grant for creative writing (1969–70)
• An American Academy in Rome Environmental Design Prize (1970)
• A National Endowment for the Arts fellowship (1982)
• The Achievement Award for International Reporting from the National Association of Black Journalists (1984)
• A Nora Astorga Leadership Award (1989)
• A Distinguished Service award from the Northfield Mount Herman School (1993)
• A Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writers Award (1995 to 1998)
• A Critics Award from the Edinburgh Festival (1995) for her work I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky.

June was also a finalist for a National Book Award in 1972. This was for her young adult novel His Own Where. She was listed in Who's Who in America from 1984 until her death. She received the PEN Center USA West Freedom to Write Award in 1991.

In 2005, a collection of her poems called Directed by Desire: Collected Poems won a Lambda Literary Award. This award was for Lesbian Poetry. Even though June identified as bisexual, the award category was later changed to include bisexual works.

See also

In Spanish: June Jordan para niños