POWELL, ADAM CLAYTON, JR.

Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was a prominent African American congressman, serving his district in New York City's Harlem neighborhood from 1945 to 1970. A flamboyant and often controversial political figure, Powell played a key role in passing many federal education and social welfare programs in the 1960s. Near the end of his tenure, however, Powell was embroiled with the House of Representatives over alleged ethical lapses.

Powell was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on November 29, 1908. When he was less than a year old, his father moved the family to New York City's Harlem neighborhood to accept the ministry at the Abyssinian Baptist Church. The church, which was a hundred years old, expanded under the elder Powell's leadership, in time becoming one of the largest congregations in the United States.

Powell graduated from Colgate University in 1930 and received a master of arts degree in religious education from Columbia University in 1931. He served as assistant minister and business manager of the Abyssinian Church in 1930 and succeeded his father as minister in 1936. He remained minister of the church for thirty-five years.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Powell acted aggressively to address racial and social injustice in New York City. In 1930 he organized picket lines and mass meetings to demand reform of Harlem Hospital, which had fired five African American doctors because of their race. Powell also used the church as an instrument of social welfare, distributing food, clothing, and temporary jobs to thousands of Harlem's destitute residents.

Powell soon was recognized as a charismatic civil rights leader, adept at forcing restaurants, retail stores, bus companies, utilities, and phone companies either to hire or begin promoting African American employees. He transferred his efforts into the political arena in 1941, when he was elected as an independent to the New York City Council. During world war ii he worked for the New York State Office of Price Administration and the Manhattan Civilian Defense, as well as publishing a weekly newspaper, The People's Voice.

In 1944 he was elected as a Democrat to Congress, representing the Twenty-second (later Eighteenth) District. In 1947 he took a seat on the Education and Labor Committee, which was to become the base of his power and prestige. During the 1940s and 1950s, Powell challenged racial segregation in and out of the halls of Congress. He took black constituents to the House dining room that had been informally restricted to white representatives. He introduced legislation to outlaw lynching and to ban discrimination in the armed forces, housing, transportation, and employment. He became famous for attaching an antidiscrimination amendment to many pieces of legislation. The so-called Powell Amendment was always unsuccessful, but it was a way to raise the issue of racial inequality before a House that was generally hostile to Powell's stand on civil rights.

"These are the days for strong men to courageously expose wrong."
—Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

His frustration at the Democratic Party's reluctance to move forward on civil rights led him in 1956 to endorse Republican President dwight d. eisenhower for a second term. New York City democratic party leaders were outraged at this act of disloyalty and waged a hard-fought campaign to defeat him in the 1958 primary election. Powell's loyal Harlem constituents rebuffed this effort.

In 1961 Powell became chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor. He proved to be an effective, if at times difficult, point man for the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. More than fifty pieces of major legislation were passed out of Powell's committee, including the school lunch program, education and training for the deaf, student loan programs, vocational training, and minimum wage increases. Powell was instrumental in passing legislation to aid elementary and secondary education.

By 1966, however, Powell had alienated many House members because of his poor management of the committee budget, numerous and well-publicized government-funded trips abroad, and excessive absenteeism. These congressional problems were compounded by problems in his private life. Powell, despite being a minister, liked the high life. Married three times and attached to other women, he enjoyed his playboy image. Many members of Congress were shocked by this attitude.

More seriously, Powell had been charged with income tax evasion in 1958, but the trial ended in a hung jury. In 1960 he appeared on a New York City television show and lambasted police corruption. He had previously charged on the floor of the House that a constituent, Esther James, worked for organized crime in Harlem. Statements made on the House floor are covered by congressional immunity, and Powell knew he could not be sued for slander. On the television show he repeated his charge and labeled James a Mafia "bag woman."

James proceeded to sue Powell, setting in motion a chain of legal and political misfortunes for him. After James won her slander suit and obtained damages of $46,000, Powell refused to pay the judgment. He also ignored subpoenas to appear and explain his financial records. Finally the court issued two civil contempt arrest warrants for his recalcitrance.

After the warrants were issued, Powell would only return to his Harlem district to preach on Sundays, when it was illegal to serve a civil contempt warrant. The trial court then imposed a thirty-day jail sentence for failing to appear. On appeal, the New York state appellate court allowed Powell more time to comply with the subpoena but agreed with the trial court that Powell's jail sentence was not barred by congressional immunity (James v. Powell, 26 A.D. 2d 295, 274 N.Y.S. 2d 192 [1966]). Powell was not to settle the case with James until 1969.

The James episode and allegations of congressional misconduct led the House to strip

Powell of his committee chair in January 1967. In addition, the full House refused to seat him until the Judiciary Committee completed its investigation of his affairs. In February 1967 the committee recommended that Powell be censured, fined, and deprived of seniority. The full House disagreed, voting 307 to 116 to exclude him from Congress. Powell then ran in the special election to fill his vacant seat. When he won in April, he refused to take his seat. He ran again in the November 1968 election and was reelected. This time the House seated him but denied him his seniority. Powell refused to take his seat under this condition.

Following his exclusion in 1967, Powell filed a lawsuit against the House of Representatives, arguing that the House had no constitutional basis for excluding him. Typically federal courts do not entertain such lawsuits, because they deal with matters constitutionally delegated to the legislative branch. Although it appeared Powell's lawsuit was barred by the "political question" doctrine, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately decided that it could intervene. In Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 89 S. Ct. 1944, 23 L. Ed. 2d 491 (1969), the Court held that the House of Representatives could not exclude Powell, a duly elected member, who met all the constitutional qualifications of age, citizenship, and residence prescribed by the Constitution.

Powell took his House seat after the Supreme Court decision, but he lost his twenty-two years of seniority. His victory was short-lived. He lost in the June 1970 primary election and failed to get on the ballot as an independent. He retired as minister at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in 1971 and died in Miami, Florida, on April 4, 1972.

further readings

Hamilton, Charles V. 1992. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.: The Political Biography of an American Dilemma. New York: Collier Books.

Haskins, James. 1993. Adam Clayton Powell: Portrait of a Marching Black. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press.

Haygood, Wil. 1993. King of the Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr. 1994. Adam by Adam: The Autobiography of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Secaucus, N.J.: Carol.

cross-references

Congress of the United States.

Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

The political leader and Harlem Baptist minister Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (1908-1972) was a pioneer in civil rights for black Americans.

Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. was born on November 29, 1908, in New Haven, Connecticut, moving with his parents at the age of six to Harlem, New York City. His father was a successful clergyman and a dabbler in real-estate. Adam was sent to Hamilton, New York, to Colgate University (1930, A.B.) and afterwards to Columbia University (Teachers College, 1932, M.A.) and studied for the ministry at Shaw University (1935, D.D.).

He was heir-apparent to his father at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and succeeded him as pastor in 1937. Upon his return to Harlem from Colgate in 1930 he had launched a career of agitation for civil rights, jobs, and housing for African Americans. It was the era of the Depression. He led demonstrations against department stores, Bell Telephone, Consolidated Edison, and Harlem Hospital, among others, to hire African Americans.

Elected to the city council in 1941, he continued to press for civil rights and for jobs for African Americans in public transportation and the city colleges. As editor of the militant People's Voice from 1942, and with a reputation gained from his church for doing something about the destitute (he directed a soup kitchen and a relief operation that fed and clothed thousands of Harlem indigents), he was a force to be reckoned with in the Depression. Leader of the largest African American church in the nation (13, 000 members—a sizeable basis of support), he was ready to use his ample skill in political demagoguery and his charisma in defense of African American nationalism. At the age of 15 he had joined Marcus Garvey's African Nationalist Pioneer Movement, so he understood African American nationalism. The Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia had awarded him a gold medallion for his work of relief in Harlem: he wore it everywhere. Powell's picket lines at the headquarters of the World's Fair in the Empire State Building resulted in hundreds of jobs for African Americans in 1939 and 1940.

But it was after his election to Congress that he really made his stand. He took his seat in 1945 for central Harlem. He was the first African American from an Eastern ghetto and the second African American in Congress—the first was William Dawson of Chicago. Dawson was more moderate than Powell.

As a freshman congressman Powell was appalled at being barred from public facilities in the House of Representatives: dining rooms, steam baths, showers, and barber-shop. He instantly used those facilities; with political instinct, he got his staff to use them also. He engaged Southern segregationists in debate. He tried to bring about an end to segregation in the military, to get African American newsmen admitted to the Senate and House press galleries, to introduce legislation to outlaw Jim Crow in transport, and to inform Congress that the Daughters of the American Revolution were practicing discrimination.

The Southern segregationists were mainly in his own party, the Democratic Party. In 1956 Powell supported Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican seeking a second term, and did not go with Adlai E. Stevenson, the Democratic nominee. He advised Stevenson to reject Southern bigots like Long of Louisiana, Eastland of Mississippi, and Tallmadge of Georgia—all of whom were in the Democratic Party. Eisenhower won, and some Democrats were prepared to punish Powell for his defection. Some critics accused him of currying favor with the federal government over alleged tax irregularities by voting for Eisenhower. Many Democrats had switched to the Republican Party for the presidential choice, as he did, but they were not African American congressmen. Powell was his own man.

Nevertheless, Powell was a Democrat; he welcomed the advent of a new president, Democrat John F. Kennedy in 1960, and became the new chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor. Despite a high absentee record in the House, his accomplishments as chairman were extraordinary. As Powell himself said: "You don't have to be there if you know which calls to make, which buttons to push, which favors to call in." The committee authorized more important legislation than any other: 48 major pieces of social legislation, embodying more than $14 billion. Kennedy's "New Frontier" and Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programs were intimately involved with this committee: education, manpower training, minimum wages, juvenile delinquency, and the war on poverty were all at stake. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson both sent Powell letters of thanks.

All the same, Powell claimed something for his African American constituents with each bill that was laid before him: this was the "Powell Amendment." It called for a stop of federal funds to any organization which practiced racial discrimination. As chairman he had great power to block Great Society legislation; he occasionally held his ground until the Powell Amendment was included in the bill.

As an African American politician and minister he was controversial; as a personality he was extravagant and irreverent. He liked the playboy image, the good life. His first wife was Isabel Washington, a Cotton Club dancer; he had to bully his father into consenting (1933). The marriage lasted ten years. "I fear I just outgrew her, " he said. Wife number two was Hazel Scott, a singer and pianist; they had a good life together from 1945 to 1960, when he divorced her. His third wife was Yvette Marjorie Flores Diago, a member of an influential Puerto Rican family. His affairs were front-page news.

In March 1960 he was interviewed on a television show. He happened to call Esther James a "bag woman" during a debate on police corruption. She sued. Powell refused to make a settlement. He ignored all seven subpoenas and eight years of legal battles. He was wanted for criminal contempt of court by New York State. Finally he escaped to Bimini (Bahamas) in 1966, taking his congressional receptionist, Corinne Huff (former Miss Ohio), with him. She had been with him on a trip on the Queen Mary to Europe in 1962 when she was 21, together with Tamara Hall (an associate labor counsel for Education and Labor). A select committee of the House recommended public censure for Powell, a loss of seniority (his chairmanship), and the dismissal of Huff. The House voted to exclude him altogether (March 1967).

At a special election two months later Powell received a stunning victory—and he did not even campaign in Harlem. Contributions from his supporters and profits from a phonograph record ("Keep the Faith, Baby") were used to pay the damages in the James suit. In March 1968 Powell returned to Harlem triumphantly, and in January 1969 he was seated in Congress yet again, although without seniority. The Supreme Court ruled that the House acted unconstitutionally when he was unseated. Powell quipped: "From now on, America will know the Supreme Court is the place where you can get justice."

In 1970 he was defeated in the Democratic primary. He died on April 4, 1972, of prostate cancer; his ashes were scattered over Bimini. His death caused a legal squabble between his current mistress and his estranged third wife. Powell was a pioneer civil rights worker 30 years before it was fashionable; his legacy to African Americans was his "sassiness."

Further Reading

For the best reading about this subject, see Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Adam by Adam (1971). Andy Jacobs' The Powell Affair: Freedom Minus One (1973) is the story of the vote in the House of Representatives (1967) which unseated Powell. There is an obituary in the New York Times, April 5, 1972, which provides additional information. □

Powell v. Mccormack, 395 U.S. 486, argued 21 Apr. 1969, decided 16 June 1969 by vote of 8 to 1; Warren for the Court, Douglas concurring, Stewart in dissent. In 1966 the flamboyant black congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. was reelected by the Harlem constituency he had served since 1942. Because of allegations about improper use of congressional funds (and because, his supporters contended, he was about to become chairman of the House Labor and Education Committee), the House of Representatives refused to permit Powell to take his seat at the beginning of the Ninetieth Congress. A select committee reported that he met the qualifications of age, residency, and citizenship specified in Article I, section 2, but concluded that he was guilty of various improprieties. It recommended that he be sworn in and seated but fined and deprived of his seniority (and thus his chairmanship). This was rejected by the House, which then voted, 307 to 116, to exclude him from the Ninetieth Congress and declare his seat vacant.

Powell and some of his supporters then filed suit in federal court, seeking a declaratory judgment that he had been improperly excluded, an injunction prohibiting the House from excluding him, and back pay. While the suit was pending, Powell was reelected to the Ninety‐first Congress. He was permitted to take his seat but fined and stripped of his seniority and chairmanship.

The Supreme Court held that a lawsuit against members of Congress, including House Speaker John McCormack, violated the legislative immunity protected by the Speech and Debate Clause of Article I, section 6, and removed them as defendants. But it ruled that the suit could be maintained against employees of the House such as the doorkeeper and sergeant‐at‐arms.

The government argued that Powell's lawsuit should be dismissed because Congress's decision to exclude one of its members constituted a nonjusticiable political question. Under the doctrine of Baker v. Carr (1962), political questions that courts should not decide include those where the Constitution has made a “textually demonstrable commitment” to another branch of government to exercise a particular power (p. 518). Congress, the Court said, had only the exclusive authority to judge the qualifications of its members as specified in Article I, section 2. Powell met those qualifications and thus exclusion for any other reason was reviewable—and, at least in this case, unconstitutional.

The Court also considered whether the vote to exclude could also be taken as a vote to expel, since the two‐thirds requirement for expulsion had been met. It observed, however, that the House had been advised by the speaker that it was voting to exclude and that only a majority vote was needed. Furthermore the rules of the House disfavored expulsion for misbehavior in a prior Congress. Thus a vote to exclude could not be transformed retroactively into a vote to expel; expulsion and exclusion are not equivalents.

If Powell had actually been expelled for misconduct, could the Supreme Court have reviewed the case or would this also have constituted a nonjusticiable political question? The Court gave no formal answer, although Justice William O. Douglas suggested in a footnote that an expulsion would not be reviewable. Also left unanswered was whether a decision to exclude a member because of a disputed finding that he or she was not a citizen or properly a resident of the district would be subject to judicial review.

Powell, following closely on the heels of Baker v. Carr, seemed to have placed significant limits on the political questions doctrine, thus inviting greater judicial intrusion into the internal processes of the other branches of government. It does not, however, appear to have had that effect. In the many cases in which federal courts declined to address the legality of the war in Vietnam, for example, the political questions doctrine, contrary to the implications in Baker, was employed to support judicial restraint.

See also Congress, Qualifications of Members of.

Joel B. Grossman

Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. 1908–72, American politician and clergyman, b. New Haven, Conn. In 1937 he became pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City, and he soon became known as a militant black leader. He was elected to the city council of New York in 1941, and was elected for the first time to the U.S. Congress in 1945. Although a Democrat, he campaigned for President Eisenhower in 1956. As chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor after 1960, he acquired a reputation for flamboyance and disregard of convention. In Mar., 1967, he was excluded by the House of Representatives, which had accused him of misuse of House funds, contempt of New York court orders concerning a 1963 libel judgment against him, and conduct unbecoming a member. He was overwhelmingly reelected in a special election in 1967 and again in 1968. He was seated in the 1969 Congress but fined $25,000 and deprived of his seniority. In June, 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that his exclusion from the House had been unconstitutional. Powell was defeated for reelection in 1970.

Bibliography: See his autobiography (1971); study by A. Jacobs (1973).