Ervin L. Jordan Jr.

Ervin L. Jordan, Jr. is an Associate Professor and Research Archivist at the University of Virginia, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. He has published several books and articles, contributed guest book chapters in others' works, as well as giving lectures and taught workshops and curated exhibitions on the American Civil War, Virginia history, and African American history. He has appeared on television several times as a consulting historian in matters of African American history and genealogy, as well lectured at conferences, universities and public events, some which were televised on C-CPAN. 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.

Education

A native of Norfolk, Virginia, and son of Carrie (1936-2009) and Ervin Sr. (1934-2007), Jordan attended the city's racially segregated public schools. His family's first college graduate, he earned history degrees and graduated with honors from both Norfolk State University and Old Dominion University. Since 2015, he has 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.

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. His responsibilities involve outreach, reference, answering inquiries, processing, organizing, recommendations and special project work. In 2003, Jordan was named the senior consulting archivist on the University of Virginia's possible collaboration with the University of Botswana.

He spent many years on a solo processing project that arranged and organized the papers of his colleague, mentor and pioneering historian Armstead L. Robinson (1947-1995). These files and papers (38 cubic feet, 1848-2001) 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."

Jordan has studied African American history, especially the Civil War, extensively. In a 2017 interview with John Coski of the American Civil War Museum, Jordan explains the 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.

Many of Jordan's writings encompass the duality of the Civil War, black soldiers fighting against or for slavery, and the repercussions of the war's outcome. He often specifically notes statues and monuments of the Civil War and their impact both when they were built and today.

He is most well-known, perhaps, for his book, Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia. His focus is Confederate Virginia, as it had more African-Americans right before the Civil War than any other state. 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 and is nationally recognized as one of the 1,100 most important books on the war in The Civil War in Books: An Analytical Bibliography (1997). A study of the war praised 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." Another work, Racist Symbols and Reparations (1998), includes nearly thirty citations of Jordan's Black Confederates.

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. 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.

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.

Jordan has also appeared on episodes of television shows, including TLC's Who Do You Think You Are?, which aims to help celebrities explore their heritage and genealogy. He appeared in season two's episode on Lionel Richie as an archivist and researcher looking to explore Richie's family tree.

Jordan also appeared in the PBS television documentary series, American Experience. He is titled as a historian in the 2011 episode on Robert E. Lee where he helps to explore the controversial figure's past.

Jordan was an historical advisor and script reviewer for the 2003 motion picture Gods and Generals (the prequel to the landmark film Gettysburg). He has also been a national historian-consultant for historians, journalists, novelists, elected officials, historical sites and museums, and state and federal agencies.

He has also been invited to speak at panels and events televised by C-SPAN, most which pertain to African American history, genealogy and Civil War and slavery topics.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Jordan was a senior judge for National History Day competitions and a grant reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

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.

Awards

In 1972, he received two "Award of Distinctions" from his Norfolk high school for his essay writing (first place) and poetry (second place).

During 1975, 1976 and 1977, Jordan, an undergraduate history major, was a three-time recipient of the Floyd W. Crawford Award “For Distinguished Scholarship,” Norfolk State College History Department.

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

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

In 1994, Old Dominion University's Phi Kappa Phi chapter (Theta Xi) awarded him its Outstanding Alumnus Award.

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 30 select University faculty fellows 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.

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 his work and 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.

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.

In 2023, Jordan received the University of Virginia's Library Staff Council Rewards and Recognition Committee Award for "his specialized reference work for faculty, staff, and students, as well as outside scholars and community members, and for enthusiastically sharing his knowledge and insights with his colleagues, which represents collegiality at its finest and becoming a source of institutional memory that exemplifies the environment of care, respect and kindness that this award recognizes.”

Publications

• 19th Virginia Infantry (Virginia Regimental Histories Series), 1987
• Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (University of Virginia Press), 1995
• Black Southerners in Gray, 1994
• The African American Odyssey (Library of Congress), 1998
• New Perspectives on the Civil War: Myths and Realities of the National Conflict, 1998
• Oxford Companion to American Military History, 1999
• Charlottesville and the University of Virginia in the Civil War (Virginia Battles and Leaders Series), 1988
• Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference (advisory board and manuscript editor), 2002
• Virginia's Civil War (University of Virginia Press), 2005
• Virginia at War, 1861 (University Press of Kentucky), 2005
• Virginia at War, 1865 (University Press of Kentucky), 2012
• The Key to the Door: Experiences of Early African American Students at the University of Virginia (UVA Press), 2017
• The Founding of Thomas Jefferson's University (Jeffersonian America Series, University of Virginia Press), 2019

Other notable 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 biographical sketches of Afro-Virginian Reconstruction politicians in Encyclopedia Virginia. Among his most recent publications is an essay blog overview of Black residents’ responses to Richmond, Virginia's Robert E. Lee Monument, 1890s-2000s, and why this and similar monuments remain emotively relevant and controversial in the recontextualization of history and public memory in twenty-first century America.