[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 171 (Tuesday, October 29, 2019)]
[House]
[Page H8546]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              REMEMBERING THE HONORABLE JOHN CONYERS, JR.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, yesterday evening, I joined Ambassador 
Etienne at the French Embassy to acknowledge the DC JazzFest. But I 
also was there, more importantly, to pay tribute to the Honorable John 
Conyers.
  Yesterday, I took a minute on the floor to indicate that I would be 
speaking about him over a period of days and weeks because his 53 years 
as a mentor and beloved colleague deserve that tribute. But yesterday, 
I was probably at a place John Conyers enjoyed the most. Many people 
may not know that he was a jazz enthusiast and maybe prepared to become 
a jazz musician in his early years as a young, young man. His father, a 
strong union organizer, a UAW worker, thought that might not be the 
best approach for his young son, I believe the oldest of their four 
children.
  John, being a dutiful son, went on to Wayne State and graduated from 
its law school as well. That was our gift to the American people.
  I want to take a moment to be able to highlight the very undercore, 
if you will, the underpinnings of the leadership of John Conyers, a 
progressive before the term could even be defined.
  I don't believe that he looked at himself in that way, but I think he 
looked at himself as one who would break through doors that others 
could not.
  Of course, he was one of the original cofounders of the Congressional 
Black Caucus. But he rose to be chairman of two committees, the 
Committee on Oversight and Reform and the Committee on the Judiciary, 
and he became the dean of this House, this entire House of 
Representatives.
  I don't think that would be what his own desire of tribute would be. 
I use the terminology that he not only spoke for the voiceless, but he 
spoke for persons who were actually silenced. That means that they 
tried to speak, but they were silenced. They were rejected. They were 
pushed back. They had not the power to be heard.
  How amazing it is to have found someone of the African American 
heritage and tradition who had gone through life in a segregated 
America to be able to speak for voices that were varied and different, 
who needed to hear that someone cared about them, from Native Americans 
to Latinos, to the disabled, to those in the LGBTQ community and 
beyond.
  He was a champion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He got into 
Congress in 1964. He understood the value of giving people, no matter 
who you were, the right to vote. I will talk about that more 
extensively in the days to come, but I remember when we sat and 
reauthorized that legislation with a Republican President, what a 
wonderful experience of coming together around voting as we wrote 
legislation that George W. Bush signed enthusiastically, with an 
overwhelming vote in the House and an overwhelming vote in the Senate.
  We even honored many different people from around the Nation, 
including naming it after the Honorable Barbara Jordan and many others 
in that timeframe to reinforce the value of voting. John did that in a 
bipartisan manner, a lesson that we can learn even today. He never 
compromised his principles, but he stood for the idea of bipartisanship 
for justice.
  He was here for the Legal Services Corporation Act. Can you imagine 
that if you were poor 50 years ago, you wouldn't have any 
representation, not in the criminal system or sense, but in the civil 
system--being evicted, having problems with healthcare and dealing with 
your health insurance, or having a matter that required legal 
representation so that you could have justice. The Legal Services 
Corporation was something very near and dear to John Conyers.

  Let me move quickly to talk about his work dealing with the PATRIOT 
Act after 9/11. Yes, we wanted to be protecting ourselves against 
terrorists, but John Conyers was a voice that said that civil liberties 
of the American people are crucial, and we will not trample in this 
committee, the Committee on the Judiciary, on their rights of privacy 
and their rights of liberty. He believed in that.
  Let me also say that in the bankruptcy bill, when so many people were 
pushing to get a bill done that would leave out women and children, 
divorcees, leave out the poor who also needed to have some way of 
organizing their debt, in fact, he was a champion for that.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, a champion for the reparations bill that most 
people don't understand, an idea they would understand later, he was 
our champion. He spoke for those who were silenced.

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