Congressman John Conyers now ‘Dean of the House’ honored in D.C.

By Askia Muhammad -Senior Editor- | Last updated: Jan 22, 2015 - 9:34:40 AM

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the longest-serving member of Congress and new dean of the House in the 114th Congress had a portrait unveiled in his honor. His family attended the ceremony. Photo: Office of Rep. John Conyers

WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) - Congress member John Conyers of Michigan, now serving his 25th term in the House of Representatives, has a record of achievements that may in fact be superior to his longevity. When Rep. Conyers celebrated his 50th anniversary as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives Jan. 7, he became the Dean of the House, now its longest serving member. If he continues to serve for nine more years, he will have served longer than anyone in House history.

Mr. Conyers is a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and he has distinguished himself in a variety of legislative endeavors, according to his colleagues and to many observers of the federal government.

“He has been lucky enough to have lived a long, long time, and smart enough to have been on the right side of almost every issue in the last 50 years,” Julian Bond, former chair of the Board of Directors of the NAACP told The Final Call, at the celebration. Others agree.

“John Conyers is one of the most important members of Congress in the last, more than 40 years,” distinguished actor, union, and political activist Danny Glover told The Final Call. “The fact that we’re sitting here and that he still serves his community, and serves this nation and serves the world in so many different ways.

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI)

“He’s always out there, as Dr. King, he’s on the right side of history, on the right side of history, whatever it is. Whether it’s apartheid, one time, whether it’s vulture funds, or whatever it is, he’s on the right side of history, and I’m proud to be here,” Mr. Glover said.

Mr. Conyers admits that he fondly admired Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Almost immediately after Dr. King’s assassination on April 4, 1968; he introduced a resolution to make Dr. King’s birthday a holiday. Rep. Conyers reintroduced that legislation in every succeeding Congressional session until it was passed and signed into law in 1983 by a reluctant President Ronald Reagan.

Similarly, since 1989 Rep. Conyers has introduced a measure—H.R. 40, as in “40 acres and a mule”—which would establish a federal commission to study the viability of reparations as a potential remedy to the scars inflicted on the descendants of enslaved Africans. When asked at the anniversary tribute if he had once again introduced the reparations resolution, Mr. Conyers told The Final Call firmly, “absolutely!”

His path has not always been easy. When he and others came up with the idea of forming the CBC, Mr. Conyers told The Final Call that he went to Harlem Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., for his counsel.

“Why do you want a Black Caucus?” he said Rep. Powell, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem asked him.

“To represent Black people,” was his reply.

“But I represent Black people,” Mr. Conyers said the Rev. Powell told him.

When Congress convened in 1969 the CBC was formed as a “Democratic Select Committee.” Two years later, the number of Blacks in Congress had swollen to 13, and on the motion of Rep. Charles Rangel, who defeated Mr. Powell in 1970, the group changed its name to the CBC. Ironically, John Conyers has never served as CBC Chair.

Ironically, when President Ronald Reagan signed the King Holiday Bill into law during a Rose Garden ceremony, Mr. Conyers was not present because he was not welcome in the Reagan White House. Similarly, Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks quietly worked in Conyers Detroit office for 25 years. When she was later presented the Congressional Gold Medal, John Conyers was not even on the dais.

Indeed, Mr. Conyers was No. 13 on President Richard Nixon’s fabled 1969 “Enemies List.” Little wonder then, that in 1973 as the revelations of the President’s involvement in the 1972 Watergate Hotel break-in and subsequent cover-up came to light, Mr. Conyers—then a junior member of the prestigious Judiciary Committee, he has since served as the committee’s chair—Mr. Conyers introduced the bill to impeach Pres. Nixon. In July 1974 the full committee approved the resolution, which was on its way to adoption by the full House when in August 1974 Mr. Nixon became the first president in U.S. history to resign.

In 1987—the 100th anniversary year of the birth of the Right Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey—Mr. Conyers convened a day-long hearing on a resolution he introduced, calling for a posthumous pardon of the Jamaica-born, Black Nationalist hero who built the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and African Communities League, the largest Black organization of its kind in U.S. history.

The scholars Mr. Conyers assembled offered compelling testimony and evidence that Mr. Garvey had been framed and unjustly convicted of mail fraud by the U.S. government.

In 1987 both the House and the Senate approved legislation fondly called “H.R. 57,” the Jazz Preservation Act of 1987. It was authored and pushed through by Rep. Conyers, declaring Jazz to be an authentic indigenous American art form—America’s Classical Music.

Former Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers is conspicuously one of the most progressive members of Congress. He has been a stalwart opponent of U.S. wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, as well as U.S. intervention in Haiti.

He has been a consistent supporter of the “single payer health care” system, known by some as “Medicare for all.” Whether it’s racial justice, healthcare, economics, the environment, gender issues, Rep. Conyers is against poverty and in favor of full employment. In the words of Mr. Bond and Mr. Glover, as well as Reps. Rangel (D-N.Y.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Stephen Cohen (D-Tenn.), and Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), who all attended the Conyers 50th anniversary celebration, Rep. Conyers is “on the right side of history.”

The Final Call