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John
Conyers,
longest
serving
African
American
congressman,
dies at
90
By
COREY
WILLIAMS
apnews.com
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.
That
voter
loyalty
helped
Conyers
freely
speak
his
mind. He
took aim
at both
Republicans
and
fellow
Democrats:
He said
then-President
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,
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
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,
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
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,”
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.”
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.
The
younger
Conyers
heeded
the
advice,
but jazz
remained,
he said,
one of
his
“great
pleasures.”
He
sponsored
legislation
to
forgive
the $1.6
million
tax debt
of band
leader
Woody
Herman’s
estate
and once
kept a
standup
bass in
his
Washington
office.
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.
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.
Dingell
died in
February.
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
Detroit
you’ve
got high
unemployment,
a
poverty
rate of
at least
30%,
schools
not in
great
shape,
high
illiteracy,
poor
families
not safe
from
crime,
without
health
insurance,
problems
with
housing,”
he told
The
Associated
Press in
2004.
“You
can’t
fix one
problem
by
itself —
they’re
all
connected.”
He
was
fiercely
opposed
to
Detroit’s
finances
being
taken
over by
a
state-appointed
emergency
manager
as the
city
declared
bankruptcy
in 2013.
Conyers,
whose
district
included
much of
Detroit,
sought a
federal
investigation
and
congressional
hearings,
arguing
it was
“difficult
to
identify
a single
instance”
where
such an
arrangement,
where
local
officials
are
stripped
of most
of their
power,
succeeds.
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,
Conyers
said:
“Impeachment
was
designed
to rid
this
nation
of
traitors
and
tyrants,
not
attempts
to cover
up an
extramarital
affair.”
Conyers
also had
scandals
of his
own.
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
other
said
they’d
witnesses
inappropriate
behavior.
Conyers
initially
said he
looked
forward
to
vindicating
himself
and his
family,
but he
announced
his
immediate
retirement
in
December
2017
after
fellow
Democrats
called
for his
resignation.
The
chorus
included
Minority
Leader
Nancy
Pelosi,
the
House’s
top
Democrat.
Conyers
became
chairman
of the
House
Judiciary
Committee
when
Democrats
regained
the
House
majority
in 2006.
He
oversaw
2007
hearings
into the
White
House’s
role in
the
firings
of eight
federal
prosecutors
and 2009
hearings
on how
the NFL
dealt
with
head
injuries
to
players.
Conyers
frequently
swam
against
the
prevailing
political
currents
during
his time
in
Congress.
He
backed,
for
example,
anti-terrorism
legislation
that was
far less
sweeping
than a
plan
pushed
by
then-Attorney
General
John
Ashcroft
in the
wake of
the
Sept. 11
terrorist
attacks.
He
was also
an early
supporter
in 2007
of
then-Sen.
Barack
Obama,
who was
expected
by some
in the
Congressional
Black
Caucus
to push
public
health
insurance,
sharp
funding
increases
for
urban
development
and
other
initiatives
long
blocked
by
Republicans.
“We
want him
to stand
strong,”
Conyers
said in
2009.
Conyers
enjoyed
his
greatest
support
back
home in
Detroit
— except
when he
tried to
venture
into
local
politics.
Conyers
took on
16-year
incumbent
Mayor
Coleman
A. Young
in 1989,
launching
his bid
with the
statement:
“Look
out, Big
Daddy,
I’m
home.”
But a
poorly
organized
campaign
helped
him
finish a
mere
third in
the
primary.
He ran
again
for
mayor
when
Young
retired
in 1993,
and lost
again.
Along
with his
wife,
Conyers
is
survived
by two
sons,
John III
and
Carl.
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