Civil rights icon and close adviser to former President Bill Clinton, Vernon Jordan, died Monday evening. He was 85.
His daughter, Vickee Jordan, tells NBC News that he "passed away peacefully surrounded by loved ones."
"We appreciate all of the outpouring of love and affection," she said in a statement.
Jordan was the executive director of the United Negro College Fund and president of the National Urban League.
He resigned from the Urban League in 1982 to become a partner at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld.
Jordan was a key campaign adviser to Clinton during his first presidential campaign and co-chaired Clinton’s transition team. He was the first Black to be assigned such a role.
His friendship with Clinton, which began in the 1970s, evolved into a partnership and political alliance. He met Clinton as a young politician in Arkansas, and the two connected over their Southern roots and poor upbringings
"Today, the world lost an influential figure in the fight for civil rights and American politics, Vernon Jordan. An icon to the world and a lifelong friend to the NAACP, his contribution to moving our society toward justice is unparalleled," NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement Tuesday, according to CNN. "In 2001, Jordan received the NAACP's Spingarn Medal for a lifetime of social justice activism. His exemplary life will shine as a guiding light for all that seek truth and justice for all people."
Jordan was born on August 15, 1935. He graduated from DePauw University in Indiana in 1957, studied law at Howard University, and began his career fighting segregation, beginning with a lawsuit against the University of Georgia's integration policy in 1961.
After growing up in the Jim Crow South and living much of his life in a segregated America, Jordan took a strategic view of race issues.
“My view on all this business about race is never to get angry, no, but to get even,” Jordan said in a July 2000 New York Times interview. “You don’t take it out in anger; you take it out in achievement.”
Jordan's wife, Shirley Yarbrough Jordan, died in December 1985.
A cause of death was not immediately released.