John James Conyers Jr. (May 16, 1929October 27, 2019) was an American politician of the Democratic Party who served as a U.S. representative from Michigan from 1965 to 2017. Conyers was the sixth-longest serving member of Congress and the longest-serving African American member of Congress in history.
After serving in the Korean War, Conyers became active in the civil rights movement. He also served as an aide to Congressman John Dingell before winning election to the House in 1964. He co-founded the Congressional Black Caucus in 1969 and established a reputation as one of the most left-wing members of Congress. Conyers joined the Congressional Progressive Caucus after it was founded in 1991. Conyers supported creation of a single-payer healthcare system and sponsored the United States National Health Care Act. He also sponsored a bill to establish Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday, and was the first congressperson to introduce legislation in support of reparations for the descendants of African American slavery.
Conyers ran for Mayor of Detroit in 1989 and 1993, but he was defeated in the primary both times. He served as the ranking Democratic member on the House Committee on the Judiciary from 1995 to 2007 and again from 2011 to 2017. He served as chairman of that committee from 2007 to 2011 and as chairman of the House Oversight Committee from 1989 to 1995. As the longest-serving current member of Congress, Conyers was the dean of the House of Representatives from 2015 to 2017. By November 2017, he was the last remaining member of Congress who had served since the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. In the wake of allegations that he had sexually harassed female staff members and secretly used taxpayer money to settle a harassment claim, Conyers resigned from Congress on December 5, 2017.
Early life, education, and early career
Conyers was born and raised in Detroit, the son of Lucille Janice (Simpson) and John James Conyers, a labor leader. Among his siblings was younger brother William Conyers. After graduating from Northwestern High School, Conyers served in the Michigan National Guard from 1948 to 1950; the U.S. Army from 1950 to 1954; and the U.S. Army Reserves from 1954 to 1957. Conyers served for a year in Korea during the Korean War as an officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and was awarded combat and merit citations.
After his active military service, Conyers pursued a college education. He earned both his BA (1957) and LL.B. (1958) degrees from Wayne State University. After he was admitted to the bar, he worked on the staff of Congressman John Dingell. He also served as counsel to several Detroit-area labor union locals. From 1961 to 1963, he was a referee for Michigan's workmen's compensation department.
Conyers became one of the leaders of the civil rights movement. He was present in Selma, Alabama, on October 7, 1963, for the voter registration drive known as Freedom Day.
U.S. House of Representatives
Elections
In 1964, Conyers ran for an open seat in what was then the 1st District, and defeated Republican Robert Blackwell with 84% of the vote. He was reelected 13 times with even larger margins. After the 1990 United States census, Michigan lost a congressional district, and there was redistricting. Conyers's district was renumbered as the 14th district.
In 1992, Conyers won re-election to his 15th term in his new district, which included western suburbs of Detroit, with 82% of the vote against Republican nominee John Gordon. He won re-election another nine times after that. His worst re-election performance was in 2010, when he got 77% of the vote against Republican nominee Don Ukrainec. In 2013, his district was renamed as the 13th district.
In total, Conyers won re-election twenty-five times and was serving in his twenty-sixth term. He was the dean of the House as longest-serving current member, the third longest-serving member of the House in history, and the sixth longest-serving member of Congress in history. He was the second-longest serving member of either house of Congress in Michigan's history, trailing only his former boss, Dingell. He was also the last member of the large Democratic freshman class of 1964 who was still serving in the House.
In May 2014, Wayne County clerk Cathy Garrett determined that Conyers had not submitted enough valid nominating petition signatures to appear on the August 2014 primary election ballot. Two of his workers circulating petitions were not themselves registered voters at the time, which was required under Michigan law. But on May 23, federal district judge Matthew Leitman issued an injunction placing Conyers back on the ballot, ruling that the requirement that circulators be registered voters was similar to an Ohio law which had been found unconstitutional in 2008 by a Federal appeals court. The Michigan secretary of state's office subsequently announced they would not appeal the ruling.
Tenure
Conyers was one of the 13 founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and was considered the Dean of that group. Formed in 1969, the CBC was founded to strengthen African American lawmakers' ability to address the legislative concerns of Black and minority citizens. He served longer in Congress than any other African American. In 1971, he was one of the original members of Nixon's enemies list.
In 1965, Conyers won a seat as a freshman on the influential Judiciary Committee, which was then chaired by Democratic Congressman Emanuel Celler of New York. The assignment was considered an elite one, as Judiciary ranked behind only Ways and Means and Appropriations in terms of the number of Members who sought assignment there.
According to the National Journal, Conyers has been considered, with Pete Stark, John Lewis, Jim McDermott, and Barbara Lee, to be one of the most liberal members of Congress for many years. Rosa Parks, known for her prominent role in the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, moved to Detroit and served on Conyers's staff between 1965 and 1988.
Conyers was known to have opposed regulation of online gambling. He opposed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Conyers introduced the first bill in Congress to make King's birthday a federal holiday. He continued to propose legislation to establish the federal holiday in every session of Congress from 1968 to 1983, when Martin Luther King Jr. Day was finally signed into law by President Ronald Reagan.
In 1983 he joined with 7 other congressional representatives to sponsor a resolution to impeach Ronald Reagan over his sudden and unexpected invasion of Grenada.
According to The New Republic, Conyers was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America in 1983.
Conyers introduced the "Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act" () in January 1989. He re-introduced this bill each congressional term. It calls for establishing a commission to research the history of slavery in the United States and its effects on current society, which is to recommend ways to remedy this injustice against African Americans. The current version was introduced and referred to committee on January 3, 2013. Conyers first introduced the proposed resolution in 1989, and has stated his intention to annually propose this act until it is approved and passed. Since 1997, the bill has been designated "H.R. 40", most recently, , alluding to the promise of "forty acres and a mule". If passed, the commission would explore the longstanding effects of slavery on today's society, politics, and economy.
Conyers served as the ranking Democratic member on the House Committee on the Judiciary from 1995 to 2007 and again from 2011 to 2017. He served as chairman of that committee from 2007 to 2011 and as chairman of the House Oversight Committee from 1989 to 1995. As the longest-serving current member of Congress, Conyers was the dean of the House of Representatives from 2015 to 2017.
In March 2016, Rep. Conyers and Representative Hank Johnson introduced legislation to protect consumers' access to civil courts. The bill was entitled the "Restoring Statutory Rights Act".
Conyers served more than 50 years in Congress, becoming the sixth-longest serving member of Congress in U.S. history; he was the longest-serving African American member of Congress.Kathleen Gray, "U.S. Rep. John Conyers leaves behind legacy of civil rights, racial justice", Detroit Free Press (December 5, 2017). By November 2017, Conyers was the last remaining member of Congress who had served since the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson.
Nixon and Watergate
Conyers was critical of President Richard Nixon during his tenure. He was listed as number 13 on President Nixon's enemies list during the president's 1969–74 presidential tenure. The president's chief counsel described him as "coming on fast", and said he was "emerging" as a "black anti-Nixon spokesman". Conyers, who voted to impeach Nixon in July 1974, wrote at the time,
National Health Care Act
In 2003, Conyers introduced H.R. 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act (Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act) with 25 cosponsors and reintroduced it each session since. As of 2015, it had 49 cosponsors. The act calls for the creation of a universal single-payer health care system in the United States, in which the government would provide every resident health care free of charge. To eliminate disparate treatment between richer and poorer Americans, the Act would prohibit private insurers from covering any treatment or procedure already covered by the Act.
House impeachment manager in Hastings trial Conyers was one of the House impeachment managers who prosecuted the in case the impeachment trial of Judge Alcee Hastings. Hastings was found guilty by the United States Senate and removed from his federal judgeship.
Downing Street memo
On May 5, 2005, Conyers and 88 other members of Congress wrote an open letter to the White House inquiring about the Downing Street memo. This was a leaked memorandum that revealed an apparent secret agreement between the Bush administration and the Second Blair ministry to invade Iraq in 2002. The Times, among the first to publish news of the leak, wrote that the discovered documented revealed the intentions of Bush and Blair to invade Iraq, along with revealing that the two had "discussed creating pretextual justifications for doing so."
The memo story broke in the United Kingdom, but did not receive much coverage in the United States. Conyers said: "This should not be allowed to fall down the memory hole during wall-to-wall coverage of the Michael Jackson trial and a runaway bride." Conyers and others reportedly considered sending a congressional investigation delegation to London.Tony Allen-Mills and Tom Pattinson, "Blair faces U.S. probe over secret Iraq invasion plan", The Times, May 22, 2005.
What Went Wrong in Ohio
In May 2005, Conyers released a report about voting irregularities in the state of Ohio during the 2004 U.S. presidential election called What Went Wrong in Ohio: The Conyers Report On The 2004 Presidential Election. Some of the claims in the report pertaining to voter suppression tend to have been supported, including through court cases. Some of the claims pertaining to manipulation of the count and similar election fraud have been refuted. Consequently this report should be considered a representation of a minority view.
The report included the following claims: Too few voting machines in Kerry-voting wards, leading to long queues. A Washington Post piece exemplified Franklin County, where wards with many machines per voter mostly had Bush majorities, and wards with relatively few machines per voter were typically in favor of Kerry. The numbers disenfranchised statewide were in the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of voters.