‘The Inquisitor’ Review: Barbara Jordan Is Speaking

Angela Lynn Tucker’s documentary "The Inquisitor" puts Barbara Jordan front and center as a voice of moral authority. More than once in the film someone compares Jordan to God; every time she speaks she carries moral authority, bracing rhetoric and a sly humor that came from knowing the score.

Jordan, who died at 59 in 1996, remains the film’s lifeblood. Born in Houston’s Fifth Ward during segregation, Jordan went on to excel at law school in Boston and overcame racial gerrymandering to become Texas’s first Black senator in decades. She championed the Equal Rights Amendment, built bridges through coffee dates and good-old-boy hunting trips, and rose to the U.S.

Congress in 1973. When she testified at Nixon’s impeachment hearings, she famously declared herself "an inquisitor." Tucker wisely front-loads clips of Jordan, with some texts spoken by Alfre Woodard in voice-over, so Jordan seems to be speaking to us today as a voice of conscience and reason.

United States, Houston, Texas

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