Conyers, John

UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography, (2003)

John Conyers

Among the longest-serving members of the United States Congress, John Conyers (born 1929) has remained a most productive lawmaker in terms of legislation introduced and passed.

Father Was Union Activist

A lifelong resident of Detroit, Michigan, Conyers was born on May 16, 1929. His father was a Georgia-born laborer who dropped out of high school and came to Detroit to work at a Chrysler auto plant; when he realized that black auto painters were being paid less than their white counterparts, he made a personal protest to company president Walter P. Chrysler. The elder Conyers' union organizing activities cost him jobs, but he eventually rose to a high position within the United Auto Workers union. John Conyers Jr. was his oldest son; another son, Nathan, went on to open one of Detroit's and the country's first African-American-owned auto dealerships.

The younger Conyers grew up in culturally rich Northwest Detroit, and the passion of his high school years was music. Receiving a letter for playing trumpet in his high school band, he also studied bass, piano, tenor saxophone, and trombone. Several jazz musicians who became national stars were part of Conyers' circle of friends in high school. "Sonny Stitt and Milt Jackson were there," he told Hollie I. West of the Washington Post . "I went to Northwestern High School with Betty Carter. And Tommy Flanagan and Kenny Burrell and I were at Wayne State University together." His favorite performer—and another friend later on—was the path breaking saxophonist John Coltrane. Conyers kept an acoustic bass in one corner of his Washington office as a congressional representative, and in the 1970s he even hosted a jazz program on Washington radio station WPFW.

The 1943 Detroit race riots, in which blacks were pulled off streetcars and attacked by white mobs, began to awaken Conyers' political consciousness, but music and school came first for a long time. Conyers breezed through high school, often skipping classes to play pool but still graduating in 1954. There was no money for college, so he relied on his father's influence to get a job as a spot-welder at a Lincoln auto plant. He became the director of his United Auto Workers local unit. Hungry for further education, he took night classes covering levels of chemistry and physics he had not reached in high school. He went on to take more night classes connected with Detroit's Wayne State University and finally enrolled there on a union-backed scholarship in the late 1940s, taking courses in civil engineering.

As the U.S. moved toward war in Korea, Conyers enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1950. Spending part of his officer training program at Fort Belleville in Virginia, he went to Washington to watch Congress in action and, according to Jessica Lee of USA Today , thought to himself, "I could do that!" Reaching the rank of second lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers, Conyers was sent to Korea and saw combat, winning several military honors.

Started in Politics as Precinct Delegate

Veterans' benefits allowed Conyers to continue his education after his army discharge, and he returned to Wayne State in 1954, switching from engineering to pre-law. He joined Detroit's Young Democratic Club and ran for the post of precinct convention delegate, inaugurating his winning political ways with a narrow victory over a rival. He graduated from Wayne State in 1957 and finished a law degree at the same school the following year, passing the bar exam and co-founding the law firm of Conyers, Bell, and Townsend soon after that.

An accident of geography helped rekindle Conyers' political ambitions: his law office was in the same building as that of veteran Michigan U.S. Representative John Dingell, who as of 2005 was the only lawmaker with more seniority than Conyers. The arrangement was beneficial from a business standpoint, as people involved in landlord-tenant disputes filtered into Conyers' office. Conyers took the chance to broaden his circle of political contacts, working in Dingell's office from 1959 to 1961 and snaring a political appointment from Michigan governor John Swainson as a state workmen's compensation referee. In 1963 Conyers served on the National Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a group spearheaded by President John F. Kennedy. He was active as a lawyer in the civil rights movement in the southern states and often represented clients in voter registration cases.

It did not take Conyers long to make his mark legislatively. He signed on as a cosponsor of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, and he backed the liberal social legislation, including the establishment of the Medicare program, championed by President Lyndon Johnson. In 1967, Conyers took the lead in resisting a bill backed by southern conservatives that would have delayed legislative redistricting according to the principle of one person, one vote. After the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Conyers introduced a bill that would designate King's birthday as a national holiday. In 1983, he saw the measure become law.