REMEMBERING ADAM CLAYTON POWELL, JR.! Today, November 29th, we celebrate the life and times of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (November 29, 1908 – April 4, 1972); an African-American politician and pastor who represented Harlem, New York City, in the United States House of Representatives (1945–71). He was the first person from New York of African American descent to be elected to Congress, and he became a powerful national politician. In 1961, after sixteen years in the House, Powell became chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, the most powerful position held by an African American in Congress. As Chairman, he supported the passage of important social legislation under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Following allegations of corruption, in 1967 Powell was excluded from his seat by Democratic Representatives-elect of the 90th Congress, but he was re-elected and regained the seat in a 1969 United States Supreme Court ruling in Powell v. McCormack. Powell was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the second child and only son of Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. and Mattie Buster Shaffer, both born poor in Virginia and West Virginia, respectively. His sister Blanche was 10 years older. His parents were of mixed race with African and European ancestry (and, according to his father, American Indian on his mothers side). They and ancestors were classified as mulatto in 19th-century censuses; Powells paternal grandmothers side had been free for generations before the Civil War. By 1908, Powell Sr. had served as a pastor in Philadelphia and was the lead pastor at a Baptist church in New Haven. Powell Sr. became a prominent Baptist minister. He worked his way out of poverty and through Wayland Seminary, a historically black college, and postgraduate study at Yale University and Virginia Seminary. In 1908, he was called as the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City; he led the church for decades, and directed an addition to accommodate the increased membership of the congregation during the years of the Great Migration. It grew to a community of 10,000. Due to his fathers achievements, Powell grew up in a wealthy household in New York City. With hazel eyes, fair skin and straight hair, he could pass for white, but he did not play with that identity until college. He attended Townsend Harris High School. He studied at City College of New York, then started at Colgate University as a freshman. The four other African-American students at Colgate were all athletes. For a time, Powell briefly passed as white, taking advantage of his appearance to escape racial strictures at college. The other black students were dismayed to discover what he had done. Encouraged by his father to become a minister, Powell got more serious about his studies at Colgate; he earned his bachelors degree in 1930. He also earned an M.A. in religious education from Columbia University in 1931. He became a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the fraternity started by and for blacks. Apparently later trying to bolster his black identity, Powell told stories of his paternal grandparents being born to slavery. But, his paternal grandmother, Sally Dunning, was born as at least the third generation of free people of color; in the 1860 census, she is listed as a free mulatto, along with her mother, grandmother, and siblings. Sally never identified the father of Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., born 1865. She appeared to have named him after her older brother Adam Dunning, listed on the 1860 census as the head of their household and a farmer. In 1867 Sally Dunning married Anthony Bush, a mulatto freedman. Adam and his family members used the surname Dunning in 1870. In 1933, Powell married Isabel Washington, an African-American singer and nightclub entertainer who was also of mixed race. She was the sister of actress Fredi Washington. Powell adopted her son Preston, from her first marriage. After their divorce, in 1945 Powell married the singer Hazel Scott. They had a son, Adam Clayton Powell III. He became Vice Provost for Globalization at the University of Southern California. Powell divorced again, and in 1960 married Yvette Flores Diago from Puerto Rico. They had a son, whom he also named Adam Clayton Powell, adding Diago to show the mothers surname, in the tradition of some Latino cultures. In 1980, this son changed his name to Adam Clayton Powell IV, dropping Diago, when he moved to the mainland from Puerto Rico to attend Howard University. (This has caused confusion as his half-nephew, 8 years younger than he, was also named Adam Clayton Powell IV.) He later became a politician in New York. A. C. Powell IV (Diagos son) was elected to the New York City Council in 1991 in a special election; he served for two terms. He also was elected as a New York state Assemblyman (D-East Harlem) for three terms. He named his son Adam Clayton Powell V. In the 2010 Democratic primary election, A. C. Powell IV unsuccessfully challenged the incumbent Charles B. Rangel for the Democratic candidacy in his fathers Congressional District. In April 1972, Powell became gravely ill and was flown to a Miami hospital from his home in Bimini. He died there on April 4, 1972, at the age of 63, from acute prostatitis, according to contemporary newspaper accounts. After his funeral at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York City, his son Adam III poured his ashes from a plane over the waters of his beloved Bimini. Powell was the subject of the 2002 cable television film Keep the Faith, Baby, starring Harry Lennix as Powell and Vanessa L. Williams as his second wife, jazz pianist Hazel Scott. The film debuted on February 17, 2002, on premium cable network Showtime. It garnered three NAACP Image Award nominations for Outstanding Television Movie, Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie (Lennix), and Outstanding Actress in a TV Movie (Williams). It won two National Association of Minorities in Cable (NAMIC) Vision Awards for Best Drama and Best Actor in a Television Film (Lennix), the International Press Associations Best Actress in a Television Film Award (Williams), and Reels Best Actor in a Television Film (Lennix). The films producers were Geoffrey L. Garfield, Powell IVs long-time campaign manager; Monty Ross, a confidant of Spike Lee; and Hollywood veteran Harry J. Ufland. The film was written by Art Washington and directed by Doug McHenry.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 15:49:59 +0000