Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
House veteran Conyers dies at 90
Civil-rights advocacy, scandal marked Democrat’s tenure In 2005, Conyers was among 11 people inducted to the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame.
DETROIT — Former U.S. Rep. John Conyers, one of the longest-serving 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.
Conyers, among the high-profile 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, 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: Conyers regularly won elections with more than 80% of the vote, even after his wife went to prison for taking a bribe.
Throughout his career, 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.
In 2005, Conyers was among 11 people inducted to the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame.
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.
His political aspirations were honed while working as a legislative assistant from 1958 to 1961 to U.S. Rep. 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 Conyers.
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. But the plight of the nation’s inner cities would remain his cause.
In 2009, his wife Monica Conyers, a Detroit city councilwoman largely elected on the strength of her husband’s last 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 three-year investigation of allegations that Conyers’ staff worked on political campaigns and was ordered to baby-sit for his two children and run his personal errands. He admitted to a “lack of clarity” with staffers and promised changes.
But he couldn’t survive the last scandal. An ethics committee launched a review after a former longtime staffer said 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 others said they’d witnesses inappropriate behavior.
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,” Conyers told a Detroit radio station from a hospital where he’d been taken after complaining of lightheadedness in December 2017. “This, too, shall pass. My legacy will continue through my children.”
Along with his wife, Conyers is survived by two sons, John III and Carl.