Word: forte
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Only five hours after he delivered this warning-and affirmation of faith in his country-Vernon Jordan, 44, president of the National Urban League and one of the nation's foremost black leaders, drove back to the Marriott Inn where he was staying in Fort Wayne, Ind. As he stepped from the fire-engine red Pontiac Grand Prix, a burst of rifle shots shattered the muggy night. Jordan slumped against the trunk of the car, then collapsed on the pavement, his head resting near the left taillight. He was alive, but he had been grievously wounded by two bullets...
...Jordan's wife Shirley, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, and their daughter Vickee, 20, a junior at the University of Pennsylvania. Senator Edward Kennedy, who had been campaigning in nearby Ohio, called the shooting "another reminder of the senseless violence that stalks our land" and hastened to Fort Wayne. Jimmy Carter personally phoned the hospital three times to check on Jordan's condition and made plans to go to Fort Wayne this week. The President described the shooting as an "assassination effort"-a term that was immediately challenged as unsubstantiated, and a blunder at a time when calm...
Across the country, the nation's restive black communities reacted with dismay and concern but stayed quiet, in part because the identity and motive of the would-be killer (or killers) remained complete mysteries. Local officials insisted that there was no racial tension in Fort Wayne that would account for the coldblooded attempt to slay Jordan. The industrial city of 200,000-12% black-has had no serious racial incidents since the 1960s. Said Fort Wayne Mayor Winfield Moses Jr.: "Anyone who is expert with guns could have done this...
...suspected that the shooting was what Police Public Relations Director Daniel Gibson delicately called a "domestic-type thing." This notion apparently rested chiefly on the fact that Jordan's companion in the car was an attractive blond divorcee, Martha C. Coleman, 36, a longtime civil rights activist in Fort Wayne. Within hours, however, police discarded that theory and pursued another: that the would-be killer was, as Gibson put it, "an individual, possibly involved alone-an isolated-type incident." In other words, police now felt that the case might follow the same pattern as the shootings of King...
Nonetheless, FBI Director William Webster dispatched 20 agents to Fort Wayne to investigate whether there had been a conspiracy to violate Jordan's civil rights. This was a device that enabled the FBI to investigate the case-the agency has jurisdiction only when federal laws are violated-but apparently it was misinterpreted by Carter as evidence that the shooting was an attempted assassination. Webster cautiously called Carter's use of the word a "possibly acceptable interpretation of the available facts." But another FBI official had a blunter reaction to the President's statement. Said he: "Premature...