George William Crockett, Jr.

Congressman George Crockett represented Michigan’s 13th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1980 to 1991 (96th-101st Congresses). At age 71, he was the oldest African American ever elected to Congress. Throughout his career, Crockett was a lawyer and judge. He was the first African American lawyer in the U.S. Department of Labor where he worked as a senior attorney on employment cases brought under the National Labor Relations Act, a legislative program of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. He also was national vice-president of the National Lawyers Guild and co-founded what is believed to be the first racially integrated law firm in the United States. Crockett served on the House Judiciary Committee, the Select Committee on Aging, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Congress. As a member of the Africa Subcommittee, he authored the Mandela Freedom Resolution, H.R. 430, which called upon the South African government to release Nelson Mandela and his wife Winnie Mandela from imprisonment. Both houses of Congress passed the resolution in 1984. Later, Crockett denounced apartheid in South Africa and was jailed for demonstrating in Washington, DC. Crockett chaired the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs from 1987 until his retirement. Crockett filed suit against the Reagan administration, claiming violation of the War Powers Act in providing El Salvador with military aid. In September 1989, a year before he retired, Crockett made headlines as the first Member of Congress to call for the decriminalization of drugs. Crockett graduated from Morehouse College and University of Michigan Law School.