Former Michigan congressman and judge, George William Crockett Jr., 88, dies of cancer

Jet, Sept 22, 1997

Former Michigan congressman George William Crockett, Jr. died recently of cancer at the Washington Home and Hospice in Washington, D.C.

Crockett, 88, whose civil rights activism led him from the courts to a seat on Congress, was known for his spirited defense of civil liberties and personal rights.

He, along with three other defense lawyers, served a four-month prison term in 1952 for a contempt of court charge. He was defending 11 Communist party leaders who had been accused of teaching the over-throw of the federal government, which was a violation of the Smith Act, a law regarded by those who believed in civil liberties as contrary to the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. Years later the Act was nullified by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"I think I have always been a champion of the underdog in our society, and if anything, that segregated prison life probably pushed me a little farther along the road," Crockett said as he reflected on the prison term. "At least now I know what I'm doing when I tell a man he has so Many months or so many years of jail because I have been through it."

Crockett's judicial career in Michigan began in 1966 with his election to the Recorder's Court. A year later he became a controversial jurist when he refused to place bail on hundreds of suspects charged with participating in a massive riot in Detroit that summer. He declared that bail was a "security guarantee, not a tool of punishment and discrimination."

Following his retirement from the Recorder's Court in 1978, Crockett served briefly as a visiting judge in the Michigan Court of Appeals and later as the Acting Corporation Counsel for the City of Detroit.

He was sworn-in to the U.S. House of Representatives in November of 1980 as the Congressman for Michigan's 13th District (Detroit). He was re-elected to each succeeding Congress until his retirement in 1991.

While in Congress, he was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and served on the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees. As a member of the Africa subcommittee in Foreign Affairs, he authored the Mandela Freedom Resolution, which called on the government of South Africa to release Nelson Mandela and his wife, Winnie Mandela, from imprisonment and banning. The resolution was passed by both houses of the Congress in 1986.

The late Jacksonville, FL, native earned his bachelor's degree from Morehouse College in Atlanta in 1931 and received his law degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1934. He left his private law practice in Fairmont, WV, in 1939 and came to Washington D.C., becoming the first African-American lawyer to work in the U.S. Department of Labor.

He is survived by his wife, Dr. Harriette Clark Chambliss; three children from his first marriage to the late Dr. Ethelene Jones Crockett: Judge George William Crockett III, Elizabeth Ann Crockett Hicks and Dr. Ethelene Crockett Jones; two stepsons, Dr. Cleveland Roberts Chambliss Jr. and Attorney Marque Chambliss; a sister, Alzeda Crockett Hacker; and eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.