WASHINGTON (NNPA)-America is now grappling with the kind of terrorism that Blacks have been forced to endure throughout American history, says Vernon E. Jordan Jr., the high-powered attorney and confidant of former President Bill Clinton.

"None of this is new to Black people," Jordan said recently in a speech at Howard University's Rankin Memorial Chapel. "War, hunger, disease, unemployment, deprivation, dehumanization and terrorism define our existence. They are not new to us.

"Slavery was terrorism, segregation was terrorism, the bombing of the four little girls in Sunday School in Birmingham was terrorism. The violent deaths of Medgar, Martin, Malcolm, Vernon Dahmer, Cheney, Schwerner, Goodman were terrorism. And the difference between September 11 and the terror visited upon Black people is that on September 11, the terrorists were foreigners. But when we were terrorized, it was by our neighbors. The terrorists were American citizens."

Though he is better known as a backroom power broker who sits on a dozen corporate boards and is senior managing director of Lazard, Freres & Co., an international investment bank and financial services firm, Jordan was once head of the National Urban League, executive director of the United Negro College Fund and director of the Voter Education Project for the Southern Regional Council.

But he is best known for being First Friend to Bill Clinton.

In his speech at Howard, Jordan was critical of President Bush without mentioning him by name.

"Here at home, we have a president elected by one vote in the Supreme Court, a president who did not really and truly become president until September 11.

John Ashcroft, who lost his senate seat to a dead man, is an attorney general who spends more time covering up naked statues than he does uncovering naked injustice.

"Our national budget has gone from surplus to deficit. The national economy has gone from robust to bust - unemployment, recession, layoffs, plant closings, restructurings and bankruptcies define the national economy, despite positive predictions and an up-turn in the markets. The Catholic Church is experiencing unprecedented turbulence, and confidence in business leaders and corporations is on a downward spiral."

Jordan was particularly critical of the Enron debacle, which he described as "the worst scandal in the history of corporate America." In more ways than one, it represented White-collar crime. "A measure of Enron is that not one Black executive was high enough to have an equal opportunity to participate in the scandal," Jordan notes. Even though African-Americans have been excluded from many corporate boardrooms and suffered indignities because of their race, they have still served as paragons for Americans, Jordan says.

"Black Americans hold America's values dearly," he explains. "At times, it seemed as if we were the only ones who did. When this nation was in the grip of racism and segregation, it was Black people who reminded America of its basic values of freedom and democracy. It was Black Americans who helped America close the gap between its beliefs and its practices." It is a role that's still being served today.

"Now that America is warring on terrorism, it is Black people who remind America that we know terrorism well," Jordan says. "We know that dangerous rhetoric can lead to acts of lunacy that kill innocents. And we know that the surest defense against terrorism is affirmation of America's basic values, the values we have learned in our churches, the values we have fought and died for in America's every war, even in segregated armies."

Speaking directly to the students at Howard University, Jordan says:

"You are where you are today because you stand on somebody's shoulders. And wherever you are heading, you cannot get there by yourself." "If you stand on the shoulders of others, you have a reciprocal responsibility to live your life so that others may stand on your shoulders. It's the quid pro quo of life."

"We exist temporarily through what we take, but we live forever through what we give"

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