[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 46 (Friday, March 29, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E520]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   A TRIBUTE TO ANGELA DENISE DILLARD

                                 ______


                         HON. JOHN CONYERS, JR.

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, March 29, 1996

  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in tribute to Dr. Angela 
Denise Dillard, assistant professor of history and Afro-American and 
African studies at the University of Minnesota. A native of Detroit, 
Dr. Dillard recently received her Ph.D. in American culture from the 
University of Michigan. I take particular pride in offering this 
tribute because Dr. Dillard's family and mine long have been active in 
the struggle for justice, jobs, and opportunity. Dr. Dillard's mother, 
Marilynn Dillard, and my father, the late John Conyers, Sr., were among 
the earliest members of the Trade Union Leadership Council, an 
organization formed in the 1950's to combat racism in management and 
unions. Marilynn Dillard served as secretary of TULC. Dr. Dillard's 
father, Paul Dillard, is a probation officer with the State of 
Michigan.
  In the 1960's the Dillard household was a gathering place for 
activities. The heated political and social discussions there left a 
lasting impression on Dr. Dillard and on her older brother, the Rev. 
Paul Anthony Dillard, Jr., who worked in my Detroit office as a 
congressional aide in the 1980's. The Rev. Dillard's premature death 
last year at the age of 36 ended an outstanding career as an advocate 
for the disadvantaged and the oppressed. At the time of his death, he 
was dean of the Imani Temple Cathedral in Washington, DC.
  Dr. Dillard recalls that the conversations she heard as a child 
whetted her curiosity and shaped her professional life. ``I developed 
an early interest in the history of ideas, and how ideas influence 
political and social life, culture and race relations . . . people's 
day-to-day existence,'' she says. ``My family and my family's friends 
talked about these issues constantly. Years later I started to remember 
all the old stories I had heard, and I decided, ``Wow, that would make 
a wonderful project.''
  Her doctoral dissertation, ``From the Reverend Charles A. Hill to the 
Reverend Albert B. Cleage, Jr.; Patterns of Change and Continuity in 
the Patterns of Civil Rights Mobilization in Detroit, 1935-1967,'' was 
a result of those discussions. The late Reverend Hill of Hartford 
Avenue Baptist Church was a community activist who formed broad-based 
religious and ethnic coalitions to bring about social change. The 
Reverend Cleage, of the Shrine of the Black Madonna, eventually 
discarded integrationist tendencies and turned to black nationalism and 
black theology in the 1960's.
  Dr Dillard argues that Detroit underwent ``two major phases in its 
civil rights mobilizations, sustained by two distinct communities of 
protest. The first phase (and community) was generated by migration, 
depression, and the logic of industrial unionism; the second was 
generated by the rise of the southern civil rights movement and by the 
social and economic environment of post-World War II Detroit.'' Dr. 
Dillard's study emphasizes the tension, discontinuities, false starts, 
and realignments among those constituting and often reconstituting the 
city's civil rights-oriented left.
  A graduate of Immaculata High School, Dr. Dillard received her B.A. 
in 1988 from Michigan State University's James Madison College where 
she majored in justice, morality and constitutional democracy. In 1991, 
she received her M.A. in political science from the New School for 
Social Research; the next year she received an M.A. in American culture 
from the University of Michigan. In 1995, she received her Ph.D. in 
American culture from the University of Michigan.
  Dr. Dillard became an assistant professor at the University of 
Minnesota in September 1995. She taught African-American Political 
Thought in 1994 at James Madison College and she taught Tradition and 
Resistance: National Narratives and American Values, in 1993 at the 
University of Michigan. In 1991, she taught Political Implications of 
the ``Harlem Years.'' 1920-1935, at the New School for Social 
Research's Eugene Lang College.
  Numerous organizations have recognized her outstanding ability by 
awarding her a variety of grants and fellowships. In 1996, the 
University of Minnesota awarded her the McKnight Summer Research 
Fellowship. In 1994-95, she received the Committee on Institutional 
Cooperation Dissertation Fellowship, and in 1994 the University of 
Michigan nominated her for the National endowment for the Humanities 
Dissertation Fellowship.
  In addition to her dissertation, her papers and presentations include 
``Rumblings on the right: Black Conservative Thought and the Lincoln 
Review,'' which was delivered at the Graduate Student Conference held 
at the University of Michigan's Center for African and African-American 
Studies in February 1994, and ``Sports, Race and African-American 
Autobiography,'' which was delivered at the Midwest Modern Language 
Association in November 1993. Her Master's thesis at the New School for 
Social Research was ``The Negro Problem and the Problem with `Negro': 
Name Changes in the Black/African-American Community.
  Through her scholarship and her teaching, Dr. Angela Denise Dillard 
keeps alive her family tradition of activism by focusing attention on 
the gallant struggles African-Americans have made for jobs, justice, 
and opportunity.

                          ____________________