Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.-New York- 1945 to 1971.

1938, New York-Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and other black leaders convince white merchants in Harlem to hire at least one third of blacks and to promise equal promotion opportunities.

1944, New York City-Election to House of Representatives of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the first black congressman from the northeast.

1961, Washington, D.C.-Several busloads of freedom Riders organized by CORE set out on a ride through the South to test compliance of bus stations with Interstate Commerce commission desegregation order. They are arrested and attacked in many places. Attorney General Robert Kennedy orders 600 federal marshalls to Montgomery, Alabama to maintain order. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., becomes Chairman of House Education and Labor Committee. Robert Weaver is appointed Administrator of Federal Housing and Home Finance Administration. James Parsons is appointed to Federal District Court, becoming the first black District Judge. Fred Moore becomes first black sentry to guard the tomb of the unknown soldier.

1967, January to March-Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., of New York is stripped of his chairmanship of the House Committee on education and Labor, and then barred from assuming his seat in the 90th Congress. A Congressional committee investigating the case later proposes public censure, loss of seniority, and a $40,000 fine, stipulating, however, that he be returned to his seat, Congress, on the other hand, votes for exclusion, whereupon Powell and his lawyers indicate their intention to challenge the constitutionality of this decision in federal court.

1967, March-Representative Powell is barred from the 90th Congress by a vote of 307 to 116, and immediately files suit in in U.S. District Court to combat his ouster. Powell argues that he has met all Constitutional requirements for House membership: citizenship, age, and residency. The Congressman also charges that his constituency is left without representation, and hence subject to discrimination.

1967, April 7 to 11-Adam Clayton Powell appeals a U. S. District Court dismissal of his suit seeking reinstatement in the House. The Court declares it has no jurisdiction in the matter and is unable to tell Congress how to govern itself. Powell next seeks and receives a popular mandate, being returned to office by more than 74% of the Harlem electorate in a special election. The Congressman conducts his campaign from Bimini in retreat partly because he would risk possible arrest on contempt charges if he were to return to New York, but also as a means of demonstrating his enormous popularity. He is a landslide winner in a special runoff election for the 18th Congressional District, which has been left unrepresented since Powell's exclusion from the House. Powell wins 27,900 votes to 4,091 for Republican candidate Lucille Picket Williams and only 427 for Reverend Erwin Yearling, a Conservative Party standard bearer.

1968, January 8 to 13-Adam Clayton Powell, rejected by the House in 1967 after having been excluded from that body due to irregularities in the use of Congressional funds, goes on a speaking tour of California campuses, exhorting his white listeners "to join the Black Revolution" and classifying Black Power as "the saving grace of the United States."

1968, March 22 to 24- Adam Clayton Powell returns to New York City and surrenders on criminal contempt-of-court charges. On March 24, Powell tells his congregation at Abyssinian Baptist Church that nonviolence is no longer the most effective strategy in the civil rights struggle. Powell says black leadership is in the hands of the "new-breed," dedicated to retaliatory violence. His words: "Think big, think black, and think like a child opf God."

1969, January 3-After a long and entangled debate concerning qualifications and conduct, the House of Representatives votes to seat Adam Clayton Powell. However, it fines him $25,000 for alleged misuse of payroll funds and travel allowances, and demotes him to freshman status by stripping him in seniority rank.

1969, June 16-The Supreme Court slaps down the House of Representative's suspension of Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell and terms that action a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

ADAM CLAYTON POWELL, JR.-New York-1945 to1971.

Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., was a legend in his lifetime and one of the most controversial figures ever to grace American politics.

Born in 1908 to Mattie Fletcher and Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., Adam Jr., was bred in New York City, attended high school there, and went to Colgate University.

The young Powell launched his career as a crusader for reform during the depth of the Depression. he forced several large corporations to drop their unofficial bans on employing blacks and directed a kitchen and relief operation fed, clothed, and provided fuel for thousand's of Harlem's needy and destitute. He was instrumental in persuading officials of Harlem Hospital to integrate their medical and nursing staff's, helped many blacks find employment along Harlem's "main stem," 125th street, and campaigned against the city's bus lines, which were discriminating against Negro drivers and mechanics.

When Powell, Sr., retired from Abyssinian Baptist Church in 1937, his son, who already served as manager and assistant pastor there, was named his successor.

In 1939 Powell served as chairman of the Coordinating Committee on Employment, which organized a picket line before the executive office's of the World's Fair in the Empire State Building and eventually succeeded in getting employment at the fair for hundred's of blacks.

Powell also sought better hospital, housing, and educational facilities.

Powell won a seat on the New York City Council in 1941 with the third highest number of votes ever cast for a candidate in municipal elections. In1942 he turned to journalism for a second time (he had already been on the staff of the New York "Evening Post" in 1934), and published and edited the weekly "People's Voice", which he called "the largest Negro tabloid in the world."

In 1945 Powell went to Washington, D.C. as the sole congressional representative of a community of 300,000, 89% of whom were black. Identified at once as "Mr. Civil Rights,' he encountered a host of discriminatory procedures. He could not rent a room in downtown Washington, nor could he attend a movie in which his famed Hazel Scott had been starred. Within Congress itself, he was not authorized to use such communal facilities as dining rooms, stem baths, showers, and barber shops. Powell met these rebuffs head on by making use of all such facilities and insisting that his attire staff follow his lead.

As a freshman legislator, Powell engaged in fiery debates with arch-segregationists, fought for the abolition of discriminatory practices at U.S. military installations, and sought---to deny federal funds to any project where discrimination existed. (this amendment eventually became part of the Flanagan School Lunch Bill, making Powell the first black Congressman since Reconstruction to have legislation advocating federal aid to education, a minimum-wage scale, and greater benefits for the hard-core unemployed. He also drew attention to long-overlooked discriminatory practices on Capitol Hill itself, and in effecting their immediate elimination. It was Powell who first demanded that Negro journalist be allowed to sit in the Senate and House press galleries, who introduced the first Jim Crow transportation legislation, and the Armed Forces. At one point in his career, the "Congressional Record" reported that the House Committee on Education and Labor had processed more important legislation than any other major committee.

In 1960 Powell, as senior member of this committee, became chairman. He had a hand in the development of and passage of such significant legislation as the Minimum Wage Bill of 1961, the Manpower Development and Training Act, the Anti-Poverty Bill, the Juvenile Delinquency Act, the Vocational Educational Act, and the National Defense Education Act. (In all, the Powell Committee helped pass 48 laws involving a total outlay of 14 billion dollars.)

Powell also displayed considerable foresight in the cause of civil rights when he became the first northerner of any race to endorse Lyndon Johnson for presidency.

The flamboyant congressmen, however, was accused of putting an excessive number of friends on the congressional payroll, of a high rate of absenteeism from congressional votes, and of excessive zeal for the "playboy's" life.

In 1967 the controversies and irregularities surrounding him led to censure in the House and a vote to exclude him from his seat in the 90th Congress. The House based its decision of the allegation that he had misused public funds and was in contempt of the New York courts due to a lengthy and involved defamation case which had resulted in a trial for civil and criminal contempt. Despite his exclusion, Powell was admitted to the 91st Congress in 1968. In mid 1969, the Supreme Court ruled that he House had violated the Constitution by excluding him from membership, but, left open the questions of his loss 22 years seniority and the chairmanship of the Education and Labor Committee. also, unresolved were the $25,000 fine levied against him and the matter of back pay.

However, rather than return to Congress, Powell spent most of his time in on the West Indian island of Bimini, where servers could not reach him. But photographers did and the ensuing photos of Powell taking the sun on his boat while crucial votes were taken in Congress began to affect Powell in his home district. In 1970 he lost the Democratic primary and his seat to Charles Rangel by 150 votes. Powell's support had dwindled substantially, but was a tribute to his popularity and achievement that Rangel required a majority of some 1500 white voter's in the district to defeat him. Powell then retired officially in Bimini, and on April 4, 1972, he died in Miami.

The controversy over Powell continues to to rage after his death, and tends to follow racial lines. White supporters of the black cause praise his early achievements but feel that he was to difficult to work with. However, many blacks of all shades of the political spectrum defend him and many exult in the memory of his facility for denying the proprieties of the white establishment.