John Conyers Jr.

Congressman John Conyers Jr. of Detroit faced the most important political decision of his career early this year. Since he was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1964, Conyers had been considered the heir apparent to Adam Clayton Powell as the nation's leading Negro Democratic politician. Now he was asked to join the nine-man committee set up to examine Powell's sins and recommend whether the Harlem leader should be seated. Conyers knew that Congress was in a nasty mood over Powell's behavior -- indignant over Powell's bravado and scared over increasingly widespread feeling that Congress was generally corrupt.

It was clear from the beginning that the select committee would have to recommend some sort of punishment -- at least a censure. But if Conyers joined in that kind of recommendation, he faced the danger of being branded a "sellout." But he also knew that if Powell was to retain his seat, the committee report would've to be unanimous. Fearing that the committee would fragment -- and so aid those bitter-enders in the House who wanted to throw Powell out -- Conyers decided to work for unity within the committee. He would go along with proposals that censured Powell, as long as those who wanted Powell out entirely would, too.

Due largely to Conyers back-room campaign for a unanimous report, the committee accepted the principle that the voters of New York's 18th district could choose their own representative. The committee field a unanimous report recommending that Powell take his seat and then be censured, fined $40,000, and deprived of his seniority. Conyers, after signing the report, field "additional views" -- that the committee's action deprived Powell of due process by finding him without a legal trial, that it was an unconstitutional bill of attainer.

But Conyers got what he wanted; it was at least conceivable that Powell would be sworn in. Conyers emerged as a primary architect of the save-Powell campaign, and his remarks in the report stamped him as anything but a "sellout." Perhaps most important, his personal views -- considerably and understandably more sympathetic to Powell than almost anybody else in Congress-did not pre cent him from playing a major role in de liberations with eight other representatives for more conservative than he.

This is John Conyers' secret. He is one of the most radical Congressmen in the country. Easily the most militant Negro in Congress, he has consistently chided the Administration for cutting back poverty appropriations, for ineffective enforcement of civil rights statutes, for refusing to realize that the war in Vietnam "is not relevant to our national interests." Earlier this year, he was one of 11 Representatives who voted against the Administration's supplemental war appropriations.

But Conyers is much more than an extremely liberal, very junior Congressman. He is privately acknowledged by the press and Congressional leadership to be the most capable and assertive Negro in Congress, now that Powell is out of power. A 37-year-old veteran of the Korean War and former labor and civil rights lawyer, Conyers not only impresses his colleagues with an agile intellect and a proclivity to do his homework. His speeches are laden with scholarly quotes -- particularly about American Negro history. And unlike the other Negroes in Congress, Conyers has taken pains to search out opinions from Negroes across the nation. Despite his good attendance record, much of his time these days is spent speaking to liberal adult and college groups.

He also manages to spend as many as three days a week -- even when the House is in session -- in his home district, which is 65 per cent Negro. Unlike Powell, who generally stays away from his constituents, or Rep. William Dawson of Chicago, who is the archtypal ward leader, Conyers is personally involved in his supporters' social and economic problems. Once a week he holds office hours for his voters on a first-come, first-served basis. When he is away, he has a corps of social workers at work for him. In addition, he has by now travelled to virtually every place in the nation that has a heavy concentration of Negroes -- and he has apparently won the admiration of all but the most bitter separatists.

Most important, Conyers is perhaps the first Negro political leader who has clearly made it with the Establishment.

At Harvard recently, Conyers made a prepared speech proposing a coalition of the nation's disadvantaged groups -- Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans, and migrant farm laborers -- and called for aid from sympathetic intellectuals. But he spent most of his time meeting with students and Afro-American Students. And even to those Negroes at Harvard who have come -- quite understandably in the past few years -- to believe that politics is not the final solution, he came off well.

Part of this was undoubtedly due to the fact that Conyers is one of the few Negroes in high political office who does not dress like a Wall St. lawyer -- he is a Negro politician, not a successful politician from an area where it is advantageous to be a Negro. More important, he came to Harvard's Negroes to listen first and talk later. As one member of AAAAS remarked, "He's an unassuming, very approachable guy, easy in conversation, and really concerned. He sees politics as affecting the daily life of the people -- not as an end in itself. There aren't too many like that.

Yet Conyers, according to the same student, who spoke to him at length is "no Stokely. He's much more pragmatic, less concerned with making people think in an entirely new framework." Conyers is militant. He sounds the theme over and over again: at present America simply doesn't hold out much real promise for the economically disadvantaged, especially Negroes. And he is strident -- he wants quick economic action, a vastly expanded anti-poverty program. That is one reason he has so vociferously opposed the war in Vietnam and has for over a year suggested as coalition between the civil rights and peace movements.

But Conyers is not scary-militant. After all, he is in Congress, working effectively on a continuous basis with men whose conservative ideas he abhors. Unlike many Negroes, he is convinced that political action -- rather than a total reliance on extra-political methods -- is a viable course of action. Much of his time in the past two years has been spent addressing voter registration rallies down South. And he feels that his proposed coalition -- which bothers a number of Negroes at Harvard because it includes predominantly white groups -- can force liberal leaders across the nation to deal seriously with problems to which they have paid only lip service.

For a two-term Congressman, it is astonishing that Conyers has been able to project a national image for himself. Essentially, he is a "bread-and-butter" man; his main concern is with improving the economic lot of the nation's Negro. He is more publicly interested in the matters politicians deal with -- poverty programs and Negro bloc voting power -- than he is with "blank consciousness." Yet his personality and intellect are such that he has not shut himself off from the more alienated part of the Negro population. An elected official, Conyers must be concerned with political -- and economic -- power. But his vision simply is far more piercing than that of the ordinary Negro politician who came to power in the waning days of the New Deal and has failed to arise above its out-dated rhetoric and piece-meal approach. Unlike many liberals whose orientation lies in the direction of past Democratic successes, Conyers has come to feel that the root of Democratic victories in the future will not be America's organized labor movement. In his own district, he is in continuos trouble in primary elections because of the opposition of the powerful United Automobile Workers local. The local leaders are understandably miffed at his preference for working outside of the traditional union-controlled circuit in dealing with poor constituents.

But this is the source of Conyers' charisma in the eyes of many Negroes. They know that he feels that the Democratic party must confront the problems of the nation's disadvantaged with a massive and quick effort. They know that he thinks that many of the traditional supporters of past reform legislation -- like the unions in particular -- simply do not appreciate the magnitude of the task that confronts former New Dealers now.

Aside from his difficulties in Detroit with the UAW, however, Conyers must soon come to grips with the issue of Vietnam and the 1968 elections. At Harvard, Conyers hammered away at the conflict between heavy war appropriations and a meaningful program to open up economic opportunity for the nation's Negroes. As the war escalates financially -- at the approximate rate of $5 billion annually for every additional 50,000 troops -- Conyers may find himself in the uncomfortable position of having to support Johnson out of party loyalty only. He will not have trouble in his own district in November -- in 1966 he was reelected with 84.3 per cent of the vote -- but he could find himself in a moral dilemma. For in 1968, John Conyers will be a national figure. When he visits competitive Congressional districts, he will have to decide whether to ask Negroes to vote Democratic like their parents did or to vote against a war that is blatantly derailing their attempt to move onto the route to economic liberation.