Location: NC 87 at SR 2171 (Saxapahaw Church Road) southwest of Saxapahaw
County: Alamance
Original Date Cast: 1976
Everett Jordan was not a politician when he was appointed to fill the vacant seat of North Carolina Senator Kerr Scott in 1958. Jordan was a textile executive, having worked in the field since the 1920s. He was born in Ramseur on September 8, 1896, to the Reverend Henry H. and Annie Elizabeth Sellers Jordan. Jordan attended Rutherford College Preparatory School and Trinity College, and served in Europe during World War I. His uncle, Charles V. Sellers, and other family members selected Jordan to run the family’s newly created Sellers Manufacturing Company in 1927. The company prospered under his leadership.
Jordan became involved in the Democratic Party in the 1930s and became chairman of the state Democratic Party in the late 1940s after assisting Kerr Scott in his successful campaign for governor. He was elected to serve on the Democratic National Committee in 1954. In 1958, following Kerr Scott’s death, Governor Luther Hodges appointed Jordan to fill his old friend’s seat in the Senate. Although several newspapers at the time considered him to have been placed in the Senate as a “seat warmer” for Hodges, Everett Jordan was reelected in 1960 and 1966. His committee work in the Senate included Agriculture and Forestry, Public Works, and Senate Rules and Administration. Jordan introduced the tobacco “acreage-poundage” legislation that changed the way tobacco was marketed and valued. He also helped the state to acquire federal funds for water resources and harbor improvements. The Chatham County New Hope Lake project, authorized in 1963, was renamed in honor of B. Everett Jordan in 1973.
Everett Jordan married Katherine McLean in 1924. They had three children. Jordan died of cancer in 1974 and was buried in Pine Hill Cemetery in Burlington.
References:
Ben Bulla, Textiles and Politics: The Life of B. Everett Jordan (1992)
William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, III, 331-332—sketch by George W. Troxler
B. Everett Jordan Papers, Duke University: http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/dynaweb/findaids/jordan/@Generic__BookV…
Biographical Directory to the American Congress website: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=J000267