Conyers, John

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Conyers, John

May 16, 1929

Congressman John Conyers Jr. was born in Detroit to John and Lucille Conyers. He graduated from Wayne State University (B.A., 1957) and Wayne State Law School (J.D., 1958). From December 1958 to May 1961 he served as a legislative assistant to Michigan representative John D. Dingell. During these years, he was also a senior partner in the law firm of Conyers, Bell & Townsend. In October 1961 Conyers was appointed by Gov. John B. Swainson to be a referee for the Workman's Compensation Department. When redistricting created a second black-majority congressional district in Detroit in 1964, Conyers entered the race. Running on a platform of "Equality, Jobs, and Peace," he won his first election by a mere 108 votes and became the second black to serve as congress representative from Michigan (he followed Democrat Charles C. Diggs Jr. from the Thirteenth District, who had been elected in 1954). In subsequent years, Conyers gained reelection by ever increasing margins, winning his fifteenth term, in 1992, with 84 percent of the vote.

In his long tenure as representative of Michigan's First District, and as a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), Conyers has worked to promote social welfare and civil rights causes. Soon after his arrival in Washington, he supported President Lyndon Johnson's Medicare program and the Voting Rights Act (1965). Just four days after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968, Conyers submitted a bill to create a national holiday on the birthday of the slain civil rights leader. Getting federal approval for the holiday proved to be an arduous task; fifteen years passed before President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law on November 22, 1983. In the interim, Conyers had convinced a number of mayors and governors throughout the country to declare January 15 a local or state holiday.

While Conyers has advocated independent black political movements, he has avoided aligning himself with black separatists. At the National Black Political Convention held in Gary, Indiana, in March 1972, Conyers was critical of those who advocated forming an independent black political party, saying, "I don't think it is feasible to go outside the two-party system. I don't know how many of us blacks could be elected without white support."

During the 1980s Conyers was often an opponent of the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush. He spoke out against Bush's efforts to keep Haitian refugees from entering the United States in 1992 and opposed the appointment of conservative African American Clar-ence Thomas to the Supreme Court. While a lifelong Democrat, Conyers was also at times critical of President Jimmy Carter, as he was when Carter dismissed UN ambassador Andrew Young. In fact, relations between Carter—who had also failed to support the King holiday bill—and Conyers grew so strained that the congressman launched a "dump Jimmy Carter for President" campaign on the eve of the 1980 primaries.

Conyers has served as chairman of the Government Operations Committee and has also served on the House Small Business Committee and the Speaker's Task Force on Minority Set-Asides. In 1998, as the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Conyers was a vocal opponent of the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

In 2002 Conyers was reelected to his nineteenth term in Congress. Conyers has spearheaded an effort to correct the voting system that eliminated thousands of African Americans from the voting lists in 2000 and has worked to improve living conditions in Haiti.

See also King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Politics in the United States; Thomas, Clarence; Voting Rights Act of 1965