June Jordan, 1936-2002.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note

I got the call on the afternoon of June 15, the call I dreaded. June Jordan has died. I knew she was very ill with cancer, but she had fought off the bastard so tenaciously over the years that I hoped against hope she could do it again. But not even she, with all her fight, could finally take the cancer down. And so we face a tremendous loss, and my throat clogs.

Writer nonpareil, June. Teacher of two generations, June. Ambassador of people's poetry, June. Champion of the oppressed, June. Prophet of a multi-democracy, June. I remember the first time I met June. It was the summer of 1988, and there was a little notice in the paper that a visiting poet I'd never heard of was to give a talk on the campus at the University of Wisconsin here in Madison. Knowing my interest in poetry, my wife, Jean, cut the notice out and taped it on the fridge, and I decided to go.

A sweltering evening, and I was startled to find more than 200 people squeezed into the classroom to hear this professor named June Jordan.

Once she began, I knew why.

Here was a singular voice! The most politically engaged writer I had ever heard, with a beautiful style all her own, making art out of outrage.

I hung around after the reading to buy every book she was selling in the hallway: Living Room, Things That I Do in the Dark, and On Call.

And when I got home and read the introduction to On Call, I was taken aback.

"I am learning, first hand, about American censorship," she wrote. "In a sense, this book must compensate for the absence of a cheaper and more immediate, print outlet for my two cents. If political writing by a Black woman did not strike so many editors as presumptuous or simply bizarre then, perhaps, this book would not be needed. Instead, I might regularly appear, on a weekly or monthly schedule, as a national columnist. But if you will count the number of Black women with a regular and national forum for their political ideas, and the ideas of their constituency, you will comprehend the politics of our exclusion: I cannot come up with the name of one Black woman in that position."

I knew a challenge when I heard one. I was the managing editor of The Progressive at the time, and in our next editorial meeting, I convinced the editor, Erwin Knoll, to invite June to become a regular columnist.

She accepted, sending a note that said: "Even as I embrace the singularity of my position, I must trust the advent of my voice to facilitate the lifting of many others into our...