John Conyers: Veteran congressman who helped to establish Martin Luther King holiday

John Conyers became the longest-serving African American in congress, co-founded the Congressional Black Caucus and helped to create a national holiday in the name of the Rev Martin Luther King Jr, but whose career rapidly crumbled at 88 when he resigned amid sexual harassment allegations.

A liberal Democrat from what is now Detroit’s 13th Congressional District, Conyers, who has died aged 90, was first elected in 1964, becoming one of five African Americans in the house. His overwhelmingly Democratic constituents re-elected him 26 times over a period spanning more than 50 years.

As the longest-serving member at the time of his resignation, Conyers earned the title “dean of the House of Representatives”, and this job security allowed him to promote liberal, sometimes controversial causes that won him a national following. He co-sponsored the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited discrimination at the ballot box. His fierce criticism of the Vietnam War led to clashes with President Lyndon Johnson and landed him on Richard Nixon’s “enemies list” of political opponents.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001, Conyers voted against the USA Patriot Act because he feared it would roll back civil liberties. He later suggested that President George W Bush should be impeached, saying he misled the country ahead of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Conyers’ twilight years were marred by allegations of sexual harassment. Several of his female staff members said he had approached them to request sex and that he had engaged in unwanted touching and other impropriety. One former staff member received a settlement of more than $27,000 from Conyers’ office after alleging in 2015 that he fired her for not accepting his sexual advances. The congressman denied wrongdoing. But, after the House Ethics Committee opened an investigation and numerous representatives called on him to quit in November 2017, Conyers step down from his post as top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. The next month, he announced his resignation.

Before the scandal, Conyers had been an inspiration to people from Detroit to the Deep South. He urged sceptical African Americans to get involved in politics. One of his early mottos was: “Register, vote, run for office. It’s power that counts.” To better harness that power and secure passage of legislation on poverty, racism, human rights, unfair tax policies and health care, Conyers and 12 other African American house members founded the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971.

Conyers strongly backed Jesse Jackson’s 1984 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination and was an early supporter of Barack Obama, then a Democratic senator from Illinois. But he was not blindly loyal, criticising Obama later for making foreign policy too dependent on military muscle.

Conyers was the only member of the House Judiciary Committee to take part in impeachment proceedings against Nixon in 1974 for the Watergate bugging scandal and cover-up, and against Bill Clinton in 1998 for lying about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Conyers considered Nixon a criminal and helped to draft articles of impeachment against the president before he resigned. However, he called the effort to impeach Clinton a Republican coup d’etat and “the most tragic event in my career”. He voted no when the house voted to impeach Clinton. Eight years later, Conyers became the first African American to chair the Judiciary Committee.

All along, Conyers was a master of the politics of symbolism. He hired civil rights activist Rosa Parks, who worked in his Detroit office for 20 years. He introduced numerous bills calling for reparations for the descendants of slaves, an issue that resonated among blacks but did not gain traction in congress.

More successful was his 15-year struggle to commemorate Martin Luther King with a national holiday. Days after King’s assassination in April 1968, Conyers proposed the first of many bills calling for a federal holiday in his honour. The proposal met resistance from Republicans, but he kept pushing, millions of people signed petitions and entertainer Stevie Wonder pitched in with the hit single “Happy Birthday”. President Ronald Reagan in 1983 signed legislation setting aside the third Monday in January as Martin Luther King Jr Day.

But critics said his effectiveness was dulled by growing arrogance and a refusal to compromise. And, in addition to the sexually harassment allegations, the House Ethics Committee investigated him for pressuring staff members to babysit for his children and to chauffeur him to private events in government vehicles. After an investigation that lasted more than two years, the panel announced a deal in 2006 in which it dropped the inquiry in return for Conyers’ promise that he would not ask his staff members to do nonofficial work for him.

John James Conyers Jr was born in Detroit in 1929. He served in the Army Corps of Engineers during the Korean War. He graduated from Detroit’s Wayne State University in 1957 and its law school in 1958.

His interest in public affairs was partly because of his father’s position as an international representative for the United Auto Workers and, for a time, Conyers worked as a labour lawyer. In the early 1960s, local Democratic Party elders considered Conyers too young to pursue federal office. Despite their opposition, Conyers ran in the 1964 Democratic primary for what was then Detroit’s 1st Congressional District and won by a mere 45 votes. He then scored a landslide victory in the general election.

Conyers is survived by two sons.

John Conyers, politician, born 16 May 1929, died 27 October 2019

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