As a congressman and pastor Adam Clayton Powell Jr. spearheaded government reform projects that fought poverty and injustice. Powell was born on November 29, 1908 in New Haven, Connecticut. His parents had mixed African and European backgrounds. Eventually, his family moved to New York City where Powell’s father would become a Baptist preacher at Abyssinian Baptist Church in midtown Manhattan. Powell Jr. grew up in a comfortable home 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. As an undergraduate, he studied at the City College of New York in 1962. Powell later transferred to Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y as a freshman. Upon graduation, his parents gave him a present of a trip to Europe, the Holy Land, and Egypt.
When he returned, he enrolled in Union Theological Seminary, then later in Columbia University Teachers' College, where he eventually earned a master's degree in religious education. Because he had very light skin, Powell chose to pass for White for a time during college, taking advantage of his appearance to escape racial strictures at college. When the other Black students at Colgate found out they were very upset, especially since he had joined an all White fraternity. Encouraged by his father to become a minister, Powell got more serious about his studies at Colgate. Powell earned his bachelor’s degree in 1930. He also earned an M.A. in religious education from Columbia University in 1931. Here, he became a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the fraternity started by and for African Americans. Apparently later trying to bolster his Black identity, Powell told stories of his paternal grandparents being born to slavery.
His father's church, Abyssinian Baptist Church, grew very large. It became a community of 10,000 people during the Great Migration, at a time when many African Americans moved north from the South. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, Powell, a handsome and charismatic figure, became a prominent civil rights leader in Harlem. He was a popular and inspiring speaker and fought for jobs and affordable housing for the community. He developed a formidable public following in the Harlem community through his crusades for jobs and affordable housing. While he worked on postgraduate studies, Powell helped thousands in his community to eat and find clothes and jobs. After his ordination, Powell began assisting his father with charitable services at the church, and as a preacher.
Shortly after, Powell became an assistant minister and business manager of the Abyssinian Church, which later led to him becoming pastor, taking over his father’s position. Powell used the pulpit to work for social change, organizing his community around issues related to discrimination in employment and government services. Powell headed the “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign, which succeeded in opening up jobs to African Americans at New York stores, and utility companies. In the pulpit, Powell’s passion for social activism began to grow. He soon became known as a community activist to the residents of Harlem. Powell was often seen organizing picket lines and mass meetings to demand reform for places like Harlem Hospital, who at the time fired five African American doctors. As head of the Coordinating Committee for Employment, Powell used community organizing. He pressured large businesses to hire Black employees for better jobs. Powell organized and led a successful protest to increase the number of Blacks employed at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
Two years later, he focused on discrimination in the New York City transportation system, initiating a boycott that forced city officials to hire hundreds of Blacks to drive bus routes in Harlem for the first time. The New York City Transit Authority hired 200 Black workers. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was also an outspoken advocate for fair and affordable housing. Powell didn’t enter the world of politics until 1941 when he made history as the first Black person to be elected to the New York City Council. He received 65,736 votes, the third-best total among the six successful Council candidates. “Mass action is the most powerful force on earth,” Powell once said, adding, “As long as it is within the law, it’s not wrong; if the law is wrong, change the law.” Throughout his time in the City Council, Powell continued to voice his concerns on racial discrimination and racial equality which resulted in him being called a “feisty politician.”
In 1944, Powell ran for the United States Congress. His main goal was to fight for civil rights for African Americans. He wanted fair employment practices and an end to poll taxes and other unfair practices. Poll taxes were fees people had to pay to vote. These taxes were used in some southern states to stop most Black people from voting. In 1945 he won election to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat from Harlem. He was the first Black Congressman from New York State and the first in the Post-Reconstruction Era from any Northern state other than Illinois. There he began a long fight against racial segregation. As one of only two Black Congressmen (the other being William Levi Dawson until 1955, Powell challenged the informal ban on Black representatives using Capitol facilities reserved for White members. He went on to be a trailblazer in Congress, paving the way for the next generation of African-American politicians.
As a Congressman, Powell was one of the few Black voices in Washington. He spoke out against unfair treatment. He challenged segregationists in Congress. For example, he was one of the only people who dared to challenge a Congressman from Mississippi for saying the word "nigger" in sessions of Congress. He also took Black people who visited him to eat in the "Whites Only" House restaurant. He clashed with the many segregationists in his party. Since the late 19th century, Southern Democrats commanded a one-party system in most of the South, as they had effectively disfranchised most African Americans from voting after regaining power in the late 19th century. The White Congressmen and Senators controlled all the seats allocated for the total population in the southern states, had established seniority, and commanded many important committee chairs in the House and Senate.
Despite verbal and occasionally physical altercations with segregationists in the House, Powell’s career soared and, for a time, he was arguably the premier civil rights leader in America. In 1946, he published his first book, Marching Blacks, urging African Americans who were disgusted with racial injustice in the South to head north for greater opportunity. While in office, Powell served on a numerous amount of committees and continued to voice his concerns regarding the mistreatment of African Americans. Also during this time, Powell called for an end to lynching and Jim Crow Laws. Powell worked closely with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) representative in Washington, to try to gain justice in federal programs. He created a plan called the "Powell Amendments", which would extend civil rights to the District of Columbia residents outlawing lynching, poll taxes, and discrimination in transportation, housing, and the armed forces. He would add an amendment to bills that spent federal money. This amendment would say that federal funds could not go to places that practiced segregation. This principle would later become integrated into Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Powell also paid attention to the issues of developing nations in Africa and Asia, making trips overseas and urging presidential policymakers to pay attention to nations seeking independence from colonial powers and support aid to them. During the Cold War, many of them sought neutrality between the United States and the Soviet Union. He made speeches on the House Floor to celebrate the anniversaries of the independence of nations such as Ghana, Indonesia, and Sierra Leone. In addition, Powell, against the State Department’s advice which preferred to ignore the event, attended the Asian–African Conference in 1955 as an observer. Once there, Powell made a positive international impression in public addresses that balanced his concerns of his nation’s race relations problems with a spirited defense of the United States as a whole against Communist criticisms. Powell emphasized how far the nation had come in improving race relations, using his own remarkable career as an example of the growing opportunities available to minorities.
His actions coming as they did amid the Cold War, transformed the perceptions that many had of the New York congressman. When he returned, he was praised by both political parties. Powell made front-page news, and his pro-America stance won him accolades from former critics. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was willing to act independently. In 1956, he broke party ranks and supported Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower for re-election, saying the civil rights plank in the Democratic Party platform was too weak. In 1958, he survived a determined effort by the Tammany Hall Democratic Party machine in New York to oust him in the primary election. Powell was indicted for tax evasion and was accused of traveling at the cost of the public’s expense. He was able to overcome these challenges and win re-election into the House. With this influence, Powell suggested to the State Department that the United States should focus on the popular arts such as sponsoring international tours of famous jazz musicians. They approved the idea and the first such tour was with Dizzy Gillespie.
Powell became the first Black Chairman of the prestigious and powerful Labor and Education Committee in 1961. This was a very important position. His tenure as head of the committee proved noteworthy for its extraordinary activity. In that capacity he played a leading role in the passage of a minimum wage act, antipoverty acts, and bills supporting manpower training and federal aid to education. He expanded the minimum wage to include retail workers; and worked for equal pay for women; he supported education and training for the deaf, nursing education, and vocational training; he led legislation for standards for wages and work hours; as well as for aid for elementary and secondary education, and school libraries. Powell’s committee proved extremely effective in enacting major parts of President Kennedy’s “New Frontier” and President Johnson’s “Great Society” social programs and the War on Poverty.
However, by the mid-1960s, Powell was increasingly being criticized for mismanaging his committee's budget, taking trips abroad at public expense, and missing sittings of his committee. He was also under attack in his District, where his refusal to pay a slander judgment made him subject to arrest. He spent increasing amounts of time in Florida. Questions regarding Powell’s record and character persisted. He was depicted as an absentee congressman, someone who preferred to be anywhere but in Washington. Because of growing concerns about his legal problems, the House Democratic Caucus stripped Powell of his committee chairmanship in 1967. The full House refused to seat him until completion of the Judiciary Committee's investigation. Powell urged his supporters to "keep the faith, baby" while the investigation was under way. On March 1, the House voted 307 to 116 to exclude him. Powell said, "On this day, the day of March in my opinion, the end of the United States of America as the land of the free and the home of the brave."
Powell won the Special Election to fill the vacancy caused by his exclusion but did not take his seat and instead went to the Bahamas. He sued in Powell v. McCormack to retain his seat. In November 1968, Powell was again elected. On January 3, 1969, after five hours of wrangling, the House voted to seat Powell, provided he pay a $25,000 fine and forfeit his seniority. Powell agreed to the stipulations and was sworn in. In June 1969, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the House had acted unconstitutionally when it excluded Powell, a duly elected member. Powell’s increasing absenteeism was noted by his constituents. In June 1970, he was defeated in the Democratic primary by Charles B. Rangel. That fall, after failing to get enough signatures to get on the November ballot as an Independent, he resigned as minister at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and moved to his retreat on Bimini.
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. Powel divorce his Isabel in 1945, and married jazz singer and pianist Hazel Scott. They had a son, Adam Clayton Powell III. Powell divorced again, and in 1960 married Yvette Flores Diago from Puerto Rico. They had a son, whom he also named Adam Clayton Powell IV. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. passed away on April 4, 1972 from cancer in Miami, Florida. Although his political career is seen by many as controversial, no one can deny the historic achievements he made for the African Americans and the national Black leaders who came after him.