Artishia Wilkerson Jordan
*Artishia Wilkerson Jordan was born on this date in 1901. She was a Black educator and club woman.
Artishia Garcia Wilkerson was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of Bernard Orange Wilkerson and Artishia Garcia Gilbert Wilkerson. Her father was an attorney; her mother was a medical doctor who died soon after childbirth in 1904.
Young Artishia earned degrees at Howard University (1922) and the University of Chicago (1923), and a master's degree in mathematics in 1924 from the University of California. Artishia Wilkerson married Frederick Douglass Jordan in 1925. He became a bishop in the A. M. E. Church in 1952. Frederick's parents were lawyer Dock J. Jordan and educator Carrie Thomas Jordan.
Career
Jordan was a math teacher in Louisville as a young woman. She was president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Council of Negro Women and was active in Alpha Kappa Alpha, the NAACP, the Order of the Eastern Star, and the YWCA. She was on the editorial board of the Afro-American Women's Journal. As a bishop's wife in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), she held denominational and interdenominational leadership positions, including a term as president of the Southern California Conference Branch. She organized the AME Ministers' Wives Alliance for Los Angeles spouses and the Interdenominational Ministers' Wives Council of Los Angeles. She served on the board of the Southern California Council of Church Women.
She was the director of the Los Angeles American Mission to Lepers chapter. Jordan edited the Women's Missionary Recorder during World War II. She was active in the World Federation of Methodist Women and as a speaker for the American Bible Society. The Jordan’s traveled to South Africa several times in the 1950s to visit churches there. She wrote The African Methodist Episcopal Church in Africa (1964), based on their travels. As a member of the Our Authors Study Club, she led a successful campaign to install a plaque in memory of Biddy Mason at the Los Angeles County Museum in 1957. Artishia Wilkerson Jordan died on February 7, 1974; her husband died in 1979.
Legacy
There are Artishia and Frederick Jordan Scholarship Funds at Howard University and Morris Brown College for "students who display academic excellence, a passion for community service, and involvement in religious life." A building at Morris Brown College in Atlanta is Jordan Hall for Artishia Wilkerson Jordan. An Artishia Wilkerson Jordan Women's Missionary Society is based in Los Angeles, named in her memory.
