John Conyers: Longest Serving Black Congressman dies

Representative John Conyers Jr., a civil rights advocate for five decades and the longest-serving African-American in the history of Congress, died on Sunday at his home in Detroit. He was 90.

Mr. Conyers was the only member of the House Judiciary Committee to participate in impeachment inquiries against both Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton.

In 1974, he said impeachment of Mr. Nixon was necessary “to restore to our government the proper balance of constitutional power and to serve notice on all future presidents that such abuse of power will never again be tolerated.”

First elected in 1964 — after winning the Democratic nomination by only 108 votes — Mr. Conyers was an early critic of the Vietnam War, voting against funding it the following May. He was one of only seven representatives, all Democrats, who did.

His outspoken stands and congressional efforts tell the history of liberal causes over the last half-century.

In the 1960s he worked with Senators Edward M. Kennedy and Howard H. Baker and defeated legislation to undo Supreme Court decisions requiring congressional districts in any state to have roughly equal populations.

In 1968, only days after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. Conyers began a long and ultimately successful effort to make Dr. King’s birthday a national holiday, which was declared in 1983.

In the 1970s he began a long campaign for a government-run, single-payer system of national health insurance, and he proposed banning private ownership of handguns after assassination attempts against President Gerald R. Ford.

In the 1980s Mr. Conyers opposed the Reagan administration’s missile defense plans and its policy of “constructive engagement” with the apartheid regime in South Africa. He criticized the death penalty and began a series of hearings on police brutality that angered New York’s mayors, Ed Koch in 1983 and Rudolph W. Giuliani in 1997. But he also worked to create and enlarge federal death benefits for police officers and firefighters who died in the line of duty. READ MORE