Civil rights leader and Bill Clinton adviser Vernon Jordan dies at 85

• He was best known for his close friendship with then-President Clinton, to whom he served as an informal adviser.
• He successfully sued the University of Georgia for its admission policies, saying they discriminated on the basis of race.

What they're saying: "His powerbroker persona is most manifest in his decades-long friendship with Bill and Hillary Clinton," wrote Financial Times in a 2018 profile of Jordan. "To jaded voters on the left and right, he is the ultimate Washington insider, a man whose seamless waltz between business and politics has fueled resentment at an incestuous system."

"Yet his successes in the boardroom and the smoke-filled backroom have, by now, obscured a distinguished role in the civil rights movement — and an upbringing in the segregated Deep South. Born into a world that had little use for his talents, Vernon Jordan would make himself indispensable."