John Conyers, Jr.

• Born: May 16, 1929
• Birthplace: Highland Park, Michigan
• Died: October 27, 2019
• Place of death: Detroit, Michigan

Politician

A member of Congress beginning in 1965, Conyers became the longest-serving African American in congressional history in 2007. He was the first African American on the House Judiciary Committee and became its chairman in 2007. Conyers advanced legislation to protect civil rights and combat racism.

Area of achievement: Government and politics

Early Life

John Conyers Jr. was born into a middle-class African American family on May 16, 1929, in Highland Park, Michigan, and grew up in Detroit. The eldest of five children, Conyers was born to Lucille Simpson and John Conyers Sr. As a boy, he was influenced by the efforts of his father, a labor union organizer who worked to win equal pay for African American employees at Chrysler. John Sr. participated in the famous forty-seven-day sit-down strike of 1937 and represented the United Auto Workers (UAW). John Sr. instilled in Conyers a deep respect for the rights of the working class, especially African American workers.

Conyers’s boyhood dream was to become an engineer, but instead he enlisted in the Michigan National Guard in 1948 and Officer Candidate School, where he served until 1950. From 1950 to 1954, Conyers served in the US Army, and from 1954 to 1957, the US Army Reserves. Commissioned as a second lieutenant in the US Army Corps of Engineers in Korea, he received combat and merit citations.

After completing his military service, Conyers graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit with a BA in 1957 and with a JD in 1958. After graduation, he organized the firm Conyers, Bell, and Townsend, and entered into private practice. In 1958, Conyers became a staff assistant to US representative John D. Dingell Jr. of Michigan. Three years later, he became a referee for Michigan’s Workmen’s Compensation Department, where he served until 1963.

Around this time, Conyers decided that although he was young, inexperienced, and the underdog, he would join the race for Michigan’s Fourteenth District seat in the House of Representatives. The unexpected support of the sole African American UAW executive, Nelson Edwards, and strikes that shut down Detroit newspapers damaged Conyers’s wealthy opponent. With a talent for inspiring workers, a huge number of volunteers, and personal charm, Conyers won the Democratic primary by just a few dozen votes; he went on to win the general election against his Republican opponent by a five-to-one margin. In 1965, Conyers entered the US House of Representatives.

Life’s Work

Conyers’s career in Congress was characterized by a commitment to civil rights as well as skepticism of US military interventionist policy. As a representative of the predominantly African American Detroit area, Conyers focused on improving employment, education, and housing for African Americans nationwide. With the help of Martin Luther King Jr., he formed the All-Negro National Committee of Inquiry to evaluate presidential candidates and make recommendations to African American voters. In 1965, Conyers hired Rosa Parks as a member of his political staff. In 1969 he founded and became the dean of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Conyers was the first member of Congress to introduce a bill seeking to proclaim King’s birthday a national holiday (first introduced in 1965, the bill was not ratified until 1983). Conyers called the bill one of his proudest achievements. In response to racism and urban poverty, Conyers introduced the Full Opportunity Act of 1967, advocating an annual investment of $30 billion for ten years to improve the quality of life for African Americans and the financially disenfranchised. The large amount called for in the bill was meant to draw attention to the hefty sums being spent on the Vietnam War. Conyers believed America’s first priority should be addressing domestic shortcomings in civil liberties.

In later years, Conyers pursued equality through legislation that promoted civil rights. Through his work on such legislation as the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (also known as Motor Voter Act), Violence Against Women Act (1994), Federal Bureau of Investigation Reform Act (2002), Military Tribunal Authorization Act (2002), Hate Crimes Prevention Act (2009), and End Racial Profiling Act (2010), Conyers fought many types of discrimination. After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Conyers extended his concern for equality by issuing public statements in defense of Muslim Americans.

In line with his view of racism as the root of the nation’s wrongs, Conyers disapproved of the United States’ participation in the Vietnam War, criticizing the war as misguided. In 1969, he visited Vietnam with a contingent of religious and civil rights leaders and concluded that the United States was supporting a political climate of dictatorship and suppression. These views, along with his vote to impeach Richard Nixon in 1974, made him a deeply controversial figure. Conyers also called for the impeachment of President Ronald Reagan. However he opposed the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1997. Conyers also was one of the strongest voices opposing the Iraq War, starting in 2002 when he opposed the House resolution to invade Iraq. Conyers released several reports that accused President George W. Bush’s administration of manipulating information. In 2005, he called for a committee to consider whether Bush’s actions warranted impeachment. That same year, he was part of the effort to publicize the “Downing Street Minutes,” an agreement between the United States and Great Britain to wage war against Iraq.

Conyers married Monica Esters of Detroit in 1990. They had two sons, John and Carl. In 2009, Monica was sentenced to three years in prison for conspiring to commit bribery. In 2006, staffers accused Conyers of ordering them to perform inappropriate duties, such as babysitting and chauffeuring his sons. In December 2010, Conyers reimbursed the US Treasury after his son was revealed to have driven a vehicle leased at taxpayer expense. Conyers ran for mayor of Detroit in 1989 and 1993 but lost both times.

Though Conyers consistently denied that the accusations were true, by late 2017 he had effectively resigned from Congress after a number of women had accused him of sexual harassment, prompting an investigation by the House Ethics Committee. He died at his home in Detroit on October 27, 2019, at the age of ninety.

Significance

As a politician, Conyers worked to dig out the roots of racism in the United States. He sought to empower African Americans, women, the financially disenfranchised, and other minority groups. In 2007, Conyers became the longest-serving African American in Congress. With his opposition to the Vietnam and Iraq wars, and his calls to hold presidents accountable for their foreign policies, he demonstrated an uncompromising position against intervention in foreign affairs. At the same time, Conyers set forth the view that Black political involvement in politics was an indispensable step in the continued march for civil rights.

Bibliography

Blumenthal, Sidney. The Clinton Wars. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. A Clinton aide’s firsthand account of the Clinton White House battles, with an account of Conyers’s colorful defense of Clinton in the Judiciary Committee.

Clymer, Adam. "John Conyers Jr., Longest-Serving African-American in Congressional History, Dies at 90." The New York Times, 27 Oct. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/obituaries/john-conyers-jr-dead.html. Accessed 6 Oct. 2020.

Metcalf, George. Up from Within: Today’s New Black Leaders. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971. Profiles seven emerging African American stars in the national arena. The chapter on Conyers offers a snapshot of his plans as a young congressman.

Wisniewski, Matthew, ed. Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008. Short biographies of past and current African American members of Congress, interspersed with broader thematic surveys.