Government

Remembering Georgetown Law Alum John Dingell, 92, A Lion Of Congress And Lively Twitter User

John Dingell’s legacy and life lessons will reverberate throughout our country for quite some time.

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John Dingell

“You gotta live it to feel it; you didn’t, you wouldn’t get it / Or see what the big deal is, why it was and it still is / To be walkin’ this borderline of Detroit city limits / It’s different, it’s a certain significance, a certificate / Of authenticity, you’d never even see / But it’s everything to me, it’s my credibility.” — Eminem

Yesterday, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, widow of John Dingell announced:

It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of John David Dingell, Jr., former Michigan Congressman and longest-serving member of the United States Congress. Congressman Dingell died peacefully today at his home in Dearborn, with his wife Deborah at his side.

He was a lion of the United States Congress and a loving son, father, husband, grandfather, and friend. He will be remembered for his decades of public service to the people of Southeast Michigan, his razor sharp wit, and a lifetime of dedication to improving the lives of all who walk this earth.

Per Wikipedia, “Dingell attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry in 1949 and a Juris Doctor in 1952. He was a lawyer in private practice, a research assistant to U.S. District Court Judge Theodore Levin, a Congressional employee, a forest ranger, and assistant prosecuting attorney for Wayne County until 1955.”

Growing up in Hazel Park, Michigan, which forms the northwest border of Detroit (8 Mile Road) and Warren (Dequindre Rd.), I’ve always been familiar with Dingell’s name. But it wasn’t until I followed him on Twitter that I feel like I truly got a sense of “Big John” aka “The Truck.”

CNN’s Christina Maouris captured Big John’s Twitter presence quite well in her article “John Dingell kept his Twitter followers entertained until the end.” Dingell’s last tweet, dictated by his loving wife, is a microcosm of both his unending wit and everlasting marriage:

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In 2012, in an interview for the History, Arts & Archives, Dingell stated that his “single most important vote was the ’64 Civil Rights Act.” Shortly after making his single most important vote, Dingell faced a brutal primary. On September 11, 1964, Time Magazine published:

The Dingells were liberals and champions of the Negroes, who comprised some 46% of the population in their longtime constituency. The Lesinskis stood fast against any Negro penetration of their own home ground of Dearborn, a virtually all-white city of 115,600.

Predictably, Dingell this year voted in Congress for the civil rights bill, while [John] Lesinski was the only Northern Democratic Congressman to vote against it. Dingell’s vote took some courage. In Michigan’s redistricting, he lost most of his old Negro constituency, faced Lesinski in a new district that included 80% of Lesinski’s old territory and was 90% white.

In the new district, bordered by Negro neighborhoods and beset by fears of black incursions, the backlash, so everybody thought, was an ‘obvious’ issue. Dingell accused Lesinski’s followers of ‘trying to use it. They’re raising the bogeyman, telling people that if I’m elected there will be two Negro families on every block in Dearborn.’ Lesinski indeed raised some bogeymen. ‘The other day,’ he cried in a typical speech, ‘a 35-year-old man was set upon and stabbed by four colored fellows. He was stabbed to death. It didn’t appear on TV or in the papers. They hushed it up. Now that’s the kind of thing that the people are worried about.’

…To believers in the backlash theory, Lesinski’s victory seemed a cinch. But Dingell won by a vote of 30,791 to 25,620. In a district that was clearly liberal on almost every issue other than civil rights, his liberal record was the big difference. Moreover, as Dingell himself said, with more accuracy than modesty: ‘I can make an understandable and intelligent speech, where my opponent, frankly, cannot.’

In 1964, Dingell helped pass the Civil Rights Act. In 1965, he presided over the vote to pass Medicare.

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In 2010, “It was John Dingell, deservedly so, who got to sit next to Barack Obama when the Affordable Care Act was signed into law,” as Sam Stein pointed out in another tweet.

Yesterday, Ted Deutch, Representative of Florida’s 22nd District, tweeted: “When I got to Congress, John sat me down to give me advice: ‘You’re not important. It’s what you can now do to help others that’s important. If you never forget that, you’ll do fine.’”

In December, John Dingell released his book The Dean — The Best Seat in the House. As Harper Collins describes it:

Rife with a wisdom that literally only Dingell can possess, The Dean is the inspiring story of some of the greatest congressional achievements, of which Dingell was an integral part, and of the tough fights that made them possible.

Dingell offers a persuasive defense for government, explaining how it once worked honorably and well—in defeating Hitler, sending us to the moon, ending segregation, and providing for the common good of all our citizens.

He argues that to secure our future and continue our progress, we must work together once again—lessons desperately needed today.

We may have lost a lion of Congress yesterday, but John Dingell’s legacy and life lessons will reverberate throughout our country for quite some time.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t highlight three of his recent tweets that I particularly enjoyed:

Rest in peace Big John, you will truly be missed.

Renwei Chung is the Diversity Columnist at Above the Law. You can contact Renwei by email at projectrenwei@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn. 

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