[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 6]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 8554]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


                           IN REMEMBRANCE OF
                               MARC STEPP

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JOHN CONYERS, JR.

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, June 10, 2016

  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in remembrance of Marc Stepp, 
who passed away on June 3rd, 2016, at the age of 93. Our thoughts and 
prayers are with his family and friends.
  Born on January 31st, 1923, in Versailles, Kentucky, he grew up in 
Evansville, Indiana before coming to Detroit. He was a graduate of the 
University of Detroit and a U.S. Army veteran.
  Marc now rests as a legend of the labor movement--one of the greatest 
friends to working people that our nation has ever known. I speak here 
for Detroit, for the members of the United Automobile Workers Union, 
and the people whose lives he has touched, when I say that we will miss 
him dearly.
  I stand before you today as the Dean of the Congress because when I 
was a young man, Marc Stepp stood up for me. He provided me crucial 
guidance, support, and advice as I sought elected office, and 
throughout my career he has inspired me to fight harder with his own 
dedication to securing jobs, justice, and peace for all people.
  The first African American to lead negotiations with a major Detroit 
automaker, the second African American member of the United Automobile 
Workers International Board, and an organizer who fought alongside my 
father to secure collective bargaining at the major automakers, Marc 
helped create the reality of an American middle class. Countless 
workers owed their jobs and the lives and families those jobs made 
possible to his efforts. His work to save Chrysler in the late 1970s 
and early 1980s preserved a proud American manufacture who might have 
otherwise faded away.
  Marc's legacy of advocacy though was not limited to collective 
bargaining alone. He helped shape movements to secure healthcare for 
the disadvantaged by establishing the Community Health Association, to 
elevate our discourse on race as part of the NAACP, and to end 
apartheid in South Africa. Indeed, some twenty years after helping me 
get elected to Congress, he helped get me arrested protesting apartheid 
in front of South Africa's Washington, D.C. embassy--a fight that would 
be won ten years later when Nelson Mandela became President of South 
Africa.
  The legacy Marc Stepp leaves us goes beyond the wages and conditions 
he secured and the rights he helped ensure for all. He will remain an 
example of how to live our lives for generations. He will continue to 
influence the fight for jobs, justice, and peace through those who he 
inspired and influenced. He may be gone but he will not be forgotten. I 
am thankful for his service and his friendship, as are all who knew him 
and called him friend.

                          ____________________