Longest-serving black congressman co-founded caucus
DETROIT — Former U.S. Rep. John Conyers, one of the longestserving members of Congress whose resolutely liberal stance on civil rights made him a political institution in Washington and back home in Detroit despite several scandals, has died. He was 90.
Mr. Conyers, among the highprofile politicians toppled by sex harassment allegations in 2017, died at his home on Sunday, said Detroit police spokesman Cpl. Dan Donakowski. The death “looks like natural causes,” Donakowski added.
Known as the dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, which he helped found, Mr. Conyers became one of only six black House members when he won his first election by just 108 votes in 1964. The race was the beginning of more than 50 years of election dominance: Mr. Conyers regularly won elections with more than 80% of the vote, even after his wife went to prison for taking a bribe.
That voter loyalty helped Mr. Conyers freely speak his mind. He took aim at both Republicans and fellow Democrats: He said thenPresident George W. Bush “has been an absolute disaster for the African-American community” in 2004, and in 1979 called then-President Jimmy Carter “a hopeless, demented, honest, well-intentioned nerd who will never get past his first administration.”
Throughout his career, Mr. Conyers used his influence to push civil rights. After a 15-year fight, he won passage of legislation declaring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday, first celebrated in 1986. He regularly introduced a bill starting in 1989 to study the harm caused by slavery and the possibility of reparations for slaves’ descendants. That bill never got past a House subcommittee.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson said Sunday that without Mr. Conyers, there would be no King holiday — “no doubt about that.”
“He was one of the most consequential congressmen,” Jackson said.
His district office in Detroit employed civil rights legend Rosa Parks from 1965 until her retirement in 1988. In 2005, Mr. Conyers was among 11 people inducted to the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame.
But after a nearly 53-year career, he became the first Capitol Hill politician to lose his job in the torrent of sexual misconduct allegations sweeping through the nation’s workplaces. A former staffer alleged she was fired because she rejected his sexual advances, and others said they’d witnessed Mr.
Conyers inappropriately touching female staffers or requesting sexual favors.
He denied the allegations but eventually stepped down, citing health reasons.
“My legacy can’t be compromised or diminished in any way by what we’re going through now,” Mr. Conyers told a Detroit radio station in December 2017.
Mr. Conyers was born and grew up in Detroit, where his father, John Conyers Sr., was a union organizer in the automotive industry and an international representative with the United Auto Workers union. He insisted that his son, a jazz aficionado from an early age, not become a musician.
Before heading to Washington, Conyers served in the National Guard and with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during the Korean War supervising repairs of military aircraft. He earned his bachelor’s and law degrees from Wayne
State University in the late 1950s.
Soon after being elected to Congress, Conyers’ leadership at home — in the segregated streets of Detroit — would be tested. Parts of the city were burned during riots in July 1967 that were sparked by hostilities between black residents and Detroit’s mostly white police force, and by the cramped living conditions in black neighborhoods.
Conyers climbed onto a flatbed truck and appealed to black residents to return to their homes, but he was shouted down. His district office was gutted by fire the next day.
Mr. Conyers 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, Mr. Conyers said: “Impeachment was designed to rid this nation of traitors and tyrants, not attempts to cover up an extramarital affair.”