John Conyers

US politician

JOHN CONYERS, who has died at 90, was the longest-serving black member of the US congress and founder of the Black Caucus.

A Michigan Democrat, his resolutely liberal stance on civil rights and civil liberties made him a political institution, not least for his 15-year fight to get the Rev Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday designated as a national holiday.

A jazz aficionado from an early age, Mr Conyers became one of only six black members of the US House of Representatives when he narrowly won his first election in 1964.

But his legacy was smeared in 2017 following allegations that he had sexually harassed female staff. He denied the charges but eventually stepped down, citing health reasons, and saying his legacy could not be diminished.

The human rights leader, the Rev Jesse Jackson, hailed his work, noting that even some of Mr Conyers’ allies had doubted that he could persuade congress to create the public holiday.

Born and brought up in Detroit, Mr Conyers’ father, John Conyers Sr., was a union organizer in the automotive industry who insisted that his son, despite his natural inclinations, not become a musician.

The younger Conyers heeded the advice, but jazz remained, he said, one of his “great pleasures.”

He sponsored legislation to forgive the $1.6m tax debt of the band leader Woody Herman’s estate, and once kept a standup bass in his Washington office.

Before heading to the capital, he served in the National Guard and with the US Army Corps of Engineers during the Korean War. He earned his bachelor’s and law degrees from Wayne State University in the late 1950s.

His political aspirations were honed while working as a legislative assistant from 1958 to 1961, to Representative John Dingell, a fellow Michigan Democrat who, when he retired in 2014 at age 88, was Congress’ longest-serving member. That mantle then was passed onto Mr Conyers. He was the only House Judiciary Committee member to have sat in on two impeachment hearings. He supported a 1972 resolution recommending President Richard Nixon’s impeachment for his conduct of the Vietnam War, but when the House clashed in 1998 over articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, Conyers said: “Impeachment was designed to rid this nation of traitors and tyrants, not attempts to cover up an extramarital affair.”

Mr Conyers also had scandals of his own. In 2009, his wife Monica, a Detroit city councilwoman largely elected on the strength of her husband’s name, pleaded guilty to bribery. The case was related to a sludge hauling contract voted on by the city council, and she spent nearly two years in prison.

Three years earlier, the House ethics committee closed a threeyear investigation of allegations that members of Conyers’ staff worked on political campaigns and were ordered to baby-sit for his two children and run his personal errands. He admitted to a “lack of clarity” and promised changes.

But he couldn’t survive the last scandal. An ethics committee launched a review after a former longtime staff member said Mr Conyers’ office paid her more than $27,000 under a confidentiality agreement to settle a complaint in 2015.

She alleged she was fired because she rejected his sexual advances, and other said they had also witnessed inappropriate behaviour.