Ervin L. Jordan Jr.

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Ervin L. Jordan Jr. is an American archivist, historian and educator. He serves as an Associate Professor and Research Archivist at the University of Virginia, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. [1] He has published several books and articles, contributed book chapters in others' works as well as delivering lectures, conducting workshops and curating exhibitions on the American Civil War, Virginia history, and African American history. [2] [3] He has appeared on television several times as a consulting historian in matters of African American history and genealogy and delivered lectures at conferences, universities and public events, some which were televised on C-CPAN. [4] [5] He has been praised for his research in the Civil War and African American history and is one of the leading figures in developing, promoting and disseminating Black American history, culture and literature.

Contents

Education

A native of Norfolk, Virginia, and son of Carrie and Ervin Sr., Jordan attended the city's racially segregated public schools. His family's first college graduate, he earned history degrees and graduated with honors from Norfolk State University and Old Dominion University. Since 2015, he has also been an affiliated faculty member of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History, University of Virginia College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. [6] [7]

Career

In 1979, Jordan began working as an archivist at the University of Virginia. Since then, he has held several different positions including university records manager and curator of technical services. [8] His responsibilities involve outreach, reference, answering research inquiries, processing and organizing manuscript collections, acquisitions recommendations, and special projects work. In 2003, Jordan was named the senior consulting archivist on the University of Virginia's possible collaboration with the University of Botswana. [8]

He spent many years on a solo processing project that arranged and organized the papers of his colleague, mentor and historian Armstead L. Robinson (1947-1995). [9] These files and papers (1848-2001, 38 cubic feet) encompass "the development of black studies during the 1960s; the 19th century American South; the Civil War and Reconstruction; and life as an African American student and faculty member at Yale, the State University of New York, the University of Rochester, UCLA, and the University of Virginia from the 1960s through the 1990s." [8]

Jordan has written about African American history, especially the Civil War. In a 2017 interview with John Coski of the American Civil War Museum, Jordan explained the legacy and power of monuments and statues:

There are an estimated 13,000 Civil War memorials in the United States. Far too often throughout American history, statues and civic spaces have been ostensibly weaponized as a means of empowerment or oppression. Unquestionably, Confederate monuments reflect the politicized racial attitudes of their communities but in this case somebody's heroes are usually someone else's villains. Many Americans consider them racist because they openly honor secessionist proslavery war heroes--and traitors. None denounces slavery. Given the current pugnacious political climate, we must understand why Confederate monument defenders stridently praise those who defended slavery and secession while a new interracial post-civil rights generation demands their removal as evocative of sanctified traitors, racist slaveholders and white supremacy. [10]

He has contributed to Civil War scholarship; his book Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia [11] [ better source needed ] explores the roles of African Americans on both sides of the conflict. His focus is Confederate Virginia, as it had more African-Americans right before the Civil War than any other state. [12] His work explains their significance in the Civil War and shaping the American consciousness. It covers both enslaved and free blacks as well as Confederate and Union black soldiers. [13] A study of the war said of Black Confederates: "Jordan's book is unique in the literature on the southern home front . . . he is the first historian to attempt a comprehensive portrait of slaves and free blacks within a Confederate state. . . The most provocative parts of Jordan's book deal with those slaves who stayed loyal to the Confederacy." [14] Another work, Racist Symbols and Reparations (1998), includes nearly thirty citations of Jordan's Black Confederates. [15]

Affiliations

Jordan is a member of professional organizations such as the Society of American Archivists, the Organization of American Historians, Phi Alpha Theta, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) and the Virginia Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators (VAGARA). He has served on local and private, state and federal boards and commissions including the (Virginia) State Historical Records Advisory Board, the Jamestown-Yorktown Board of Trustees (2007-2023), the Board of Trustees of the Virginia Museum of Natural History (1997-2008), Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission Advisory Council (2006-2015), the Gettysburg Foundation Board of Directors (2011-2022) and the Gettysburg Foundation Historians Council (2012–present), the Supreme Court of Virginia Historical Commission, the Somerset Place Foundation Board of Directors (1988-2000), the Advisory Committee on African-American Interpretation at Monticello (home of Thomas Jefferson, 3rd U. S. president), Senior Advisor to the Norfolk State University Board of Visitors, Old Dominion University's General Review Board (1977–1979), the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission (VA250) African American Advisory Council, the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation 2019 Commemoration Steering Committee, and, the President's Commission on Slavery and the University. [6] Jordan is a past member of the Advisory Board of the National Civil War Chaplains Research Center and Museum (now the Chaplains Museum, Liberty University Department of History), the University of Virginia Faculty and Staff Advisory Group to the Bicentennial Commission, the Museum of the Confederacy Board of Trustees (now the American Civil War Museum), and the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society Board of Directors. [16]

Jordan is also a founding and current member of the Society of American Archivists' (SAA) Archivists and Archives of Color Roundtable (formerly the African-American and Third World Archivists Roundtable). He is passionate about the importance of diversity in archives and explains in an interview with the SAA Newsletter, Archival Outlook:

...though we like to think of the 21st century as one of ever-increasing globalization and an increasingly culturally diverse society, as an African American I'm concerned by the persistence of racism in the archival workplace. I’ve lectured on this subject at conferences and am a long-standing member of SAA's Archivists & Archives of Color Roundtable. We should not just define diversity. We must practice and embrace it. [8]

In 1996, he was an onscreen historian interviewee for a biographical documentary "Abraham Lincoln: Preserving the Union" for the Arts & Entertainment Television Network Series Biography. [17]

Jordan was an historical advisor and script reviewer for the 2003 motion picture Gods and Generals (the prequel to the landmark film Gettysburg). [18] [ better source needed ]

He has also been a guest speaker for panels and events televised by C-SPAN, most of which are about African American history, genealogy and Civil War and slavery topics. [4]

During the 1990s, Jordan taught a University of Virginia history seminar "Afro-Virginians and the Civil War" (HIUS 487), and African-American history courses at Piedmont Virginia Community College.

In 2018, he was appointed by UVA President Teresa A. Sullivan to join the President's Commission on the University in the Age of Segregation. [16]

Awards

In 1977, Jordan became the second recipient of Norfolk State College's Haywood H. Clay Humane Award “For Distinguished Service" to the Student Government Association.

In 1990, he was a fellow and scholar-in-residence, Virginia Center For The Humanities, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy.

In 2008, Jordan received the Black Community Advocate Award from the Black Leadership Institute, the University of Virginia Chapter of the NAACP and the Black Student Alliance.

In 2009, he was among thirty university faculty fellows selected for the Leadership in Academic Matters (LAM) University of Virginia Seminar Series, Miller Center of Public Affairs, sponsored by the Office of the President at the University of Virginia and organized through the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement and the University of Virginia School of Medicine. [19]

In 2015, Jordan was one of two African-American faculty who received recognition from the University of Virginia's Office of African American Affairs for their dedication to education; this distinction included the presentation of a West African Kente stole symbolic of the collective story, legacy, pride and values of persons within the African Diaspora.[ citation needed ]

In 2019, Jordan was the recipient of a Commonwealth of Virginia Service Recognition Award from the Governor of Virginia for his 40 years of dedicated public service to the Commonwealth and the University of Virginia. Since 1997, he has been appointed and reappointed to several state boards and commissions by eight consecutive Virginia governors.

Publications

His other works include blogs, book reviews, essays and articles which have appeared in newsmagazines, academic journals and encyclopedias such as The Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century, The Journal of American History, The Journal of Southern History, The Western Journal of Black Studies, Footsteps: African American History, The Social Studies, Voices from within the Veil: African Americans and the Experience of Democracy, Vinegar Hill Magazine, The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, The Dictionary of Virginia Biography, and Encyclopedia Virginia biographical sketches of Afro-Virginian Reconstruction politicians. [20] Among his publications is a blog post of letters of an anonymous family of Confederate women trapped by the Union Navy’s blockade of Galveston, Texas, [21] and, an essay blog overview of Black residents’ responses to Richmond, Virginia's Robert E. Lee Monument, 1890s-2000s, and why similar monuments remain emotively relevant and controversial in the re-contextualization of history and public memory in twenty-first century America. [22]

References

  1. ↑ "UVA Library". www.library.virginia.edu. Retrieved 2020-02-19.
  2. ↑ Who's Who in the South and Southwest [Marquis]. 25th edition, 1997-98. New Providence, NJ: Marquis Who's Who, 1997.
  3. ↑ Directory of American Scholars. Tenth edition, Volume 1: History, Archaeology, & Area Studies. Detroit: Gale Group, 2002. [DrAS 10A]
  4. 1 2 "Ervin "EJ" L. Jordan Jr. | C-SPAN.org". www.c-span.org. Retrieved 2020-01-27.
  5. ↑ Jeff (2017-05-01). "The Key to the Door: Special Collections' Associate Professor and Research Archivist Ervin Jordan Contributes Lead Chapter to New Book on African Americans at the University of Virginia". UVA Library News and Announcements. Retrieved 2020-01-27.
  6. 1 2 "PROFESSOR ERVIN L. JORDAN, JR". American Evolution: Virginia to America, 1619-2019. Retrieved September 17, 2019.
  7. ↑ "Affiliated Faculty".
  8. 1 2 3 4 "Someone You Should Know: Ervin L. Jordan, Jr" (PDF). Archival Outlook: Newsletter of the Society of American Archivists: 26–27. March–April 2010.
  9. ↑ "Collection: Armstead L. Robinson papers | ArchivesSpace Public Interface".
  10. ↑ Coski, John. "Q&A WITH THE SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS: ERVIN JORDAN". The American Civil War Museum. Retrieved September 17, 2019.
  11. ↑ "Jordan, Ervin L., Jr". The University of Virginia Press. Retrieved 2020-02-19.
  12. ↑ Jordan, Ervin L. (1995). Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia. University Press of Virginia. ISBN   9780813915449 . Retrieved October 1, 2019.{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  13. ↑ David J. Eicher, The Civil War in Books: An Analytical Bibliography (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), page 231, entry #655.
  14. ↑ Lacy K. Ford, ed., A Companion to the Civil War and Reconstruction, Blackwell Companions to American History (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), pp. 273-274, 275. See also Alton Hornsby Jr., ed., A Companion to African American History, Blackwell Companions to American History (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), pp. 265, 267, 268, 269, 554.
  15. ↑ George Schedler, Racist Symbols and Reparations: Philosophical Reflections on Vestiges of the American Civil War (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998), 57n30, 59n72 & 73 & 78 & 79 & 84 & 87, 60n102-106, 61n107-108 & 114-117 &120-126 & 130, 84n17 & 18, 148.
  16. 1 2 "Honors for Professor Ervin Jordan | Nau Center for Civil War History, U.Va". naucenter.as.virginia.edu. 5 June 2018. Retrieved 2020-02-19.
  17. ↑ "Abraham Lincoln: Preserving the Union".[ dead link ]
  18. ↑ "Gods and Generals (2003) - Full cast & crew - IMDb". IMDb .
  19. ↑ "Leadership in Academic Matters (LAM)". Faculty Affairs & Development. Retrieved 2025-08-04.
  20. ↑ "Ervin L. Jordan, Author at Encyclopedia Virginia". Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved 2025-08-04.
  21. ↑ Ervin "EJ" Jordan Jr., "Thwarted in Texas: A Confederate Family versus a Union Naval Blockade," University of Virginia Library, “Notes from Under Grounds: The Blog of The Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library,” posted September 30, 2024, https://smallnotes.library.vir+ginia.edu/?p=5842&preview=true.
  22. ↑ Ervin L. Jordan Jr., “Cornerstone Contributions: Black Richmonders, the Lee Monument, and the Lost Cause Redux,” Virginia Department of Historic Resources “Archaeology Blogs,” originally posted June 9, 2022, updated June 16, 2022, https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/news/cornerstone-contributions-black-richmonders-the-lee-monument-and-the-lost-cause-redux/#more-49469; Ervin L. Jordan Jr., chapter 6, "Mitchell's Prophecy: Black Richmonders, the Lee Monument, and the Lost Cause Redux, 1890-2021," The Buried Cause: Unearthing Hidden History in the Lee Monument Cornerstone, Katherine Ridgway, Christina Keyser Vida and Elizabeth Moore, eds. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, in association with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 2026), pp. 69-89, 231.
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