At this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, New York native and Tribeca alum Angela Lynn Tucker (A New Orleans Noel) premiered The Inquisitor, a documentary about the rise and legacy of Barbara Jordan as a political pioneer, who famously once said, “What the people want is very simple. They want an America as good as its promise.” The title comes from Jordan’s iconic 1974 speech to the House Judiciary Committee, where she took center stage and declared herself an inquisitor during President Richard Nixon’s impeachment after the Watergate Scandal.
With narration from Alfre Woodard, The Inquisitor includes interviews and anecdotes from legendary journalist Dan Rather, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, Commissioner Rodney Ellis, and businesswoman and activist Jewell Jackson McCabe, and more. Modern interviews are interspersed with archival footage and headlines of historical events like the Civil Rights Movement and notable Black figures, including Sidney Poitier, Jimi Hendrix, Rosa Parks, Huey P. Newton, and Fannie Lou Hamer.
One of the first things we learn about Barbara Jordan is that she acquired a number of “firsts” on her resume. After earning her law degree from Boston University in 1959, Jordan went on to campaign for John F. Kennedy. She then started her own political career. In 1966, she became Texas’s first Black state senator, winning the election against Curtis Graves, after losing in 1962 and 1964.
Unsurprisingly, she faced racism and sexism (and occasional homophobia based on rumors about her love life) in the press and in politics as a whole. But her charisma, intelligence, and pragmatism earned her respect across party lines, and she managed to easily fit in with the white conservative men who became her colleagues. She continued to grow in her career, and in 1972, she was elected president of the Texas Senate and became the first Black woman from the South elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, winning reelection in 1974 and 1976. Then in 1976, the first Black American (and the first woman) to deliver a keynote address at a Democratic National Convention.
Jordan’s ambitions to be Attorney General were never realized, and in 1979, she opted not to run for another term. Instead, she began her tenure as a professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Six years before her untimely death, Jordan was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Bill Clinton. She died at the age of 59 in 1996, and continues to be honored in her home state of Texas, including the 2002 unveiling of a statue in Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
To add another first to the long list of history-making accomplishments, Barbara Jordan is also considered the first LGBTQ+ Congresswoman. While she never came out as a lesbian to the public, she had a not-so-secret domestic partnership with Nancy Earl, though the details of their relationship remained low-key. The film shows a clip from an interview with Barbara Walters, who asks about the “mystery of Barbara Jordan.” In other words, the press wanted to know why this headstrong woman wasn’t married. Interestingly, Jordan didn’t identify as a feminist, and she had so much on her plate that she never got around to publicly advocating for LGBTQ+ rights.
The documentary is more of a summary and tribute than an in-depth biography. Jordan’s accomplishments are presented in chronological order with commentary from people who knew and admired her as a friend, colleague, and teacher. It doesn’t go deep into her childhood in Texas’s historically Black Fifth Ward, only that she was raised to be an overachiever and how that ingrained tenacity led to her impressive political career. She was a strong debater in high school, an extracurricular that influenced her knack as a persuasive, attention-grabbing orator. However, her 1979 autobiography, Barbara Jordan: A Self-Portrait, likely fills in any details not covered in the 98-minute runtime.
Tucker’s artistic style gives the documentary a unique personality. The blend of black and white photos, film reel transitions, subtle sound effects, and paper collage artwork isn’t what you’d expect from a political documentary. At first, I wasn’t sure if the mixed-media collage animations fit the tone. But the more we learn about Jordan, the more we see glimpses of her less serious side, making the untraditional documentary structure more fitting, though still a bit unusual. No matter what images or special effects are displayed, it’s the powerful words of Barbara Jordan that dominate the screen.
Angela Lynn Tucker’s The Inquisitor provides a highlight reel of the many milestones of Barbara Jordan, a determined trailblazer who managed to gain respect as a Black woman in white male-dominated politics in the 1960s and ’70s. While the documentary could’ve dug deeper into her background and life outside of bureaucracy, Tucker’s portrait of this pioneer is as inspirational as it is educational.
The Inquisitor had its world premiere June 8 at the 2025 Tribeca Festival.
