LAW NO.5: THE FORGOTTEN HERO
Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once you slip, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen. Meanwhile, learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.- Robert Greene(48 Laws of Power)
As a Congressman, he was more powerful than Barack Obama as a President. He was, arguably, the single most powerful politician in the history of Congress. He accomplished more legislative victories in a shorter period than any of his day. Yet, Adam Clayton Powell Jr's legacy is all but forgotten in the history of America be it black or white. Such an occurrence may be due to his conflicted reputation as recorded by history. Powell was born in 1908; a pampered son of privilege. His father, Adam Clayton Powell Sr., was the head of arguably, the most powerful baptist congregation in America: Abysssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York. Because of his light skin, people often mistook him for white. This was made all the more confusing due to the family's practice of "passing" in an era of racial segregation. Adam himself partook of this practice in his early years at Colgate University. His racial heritage was only uncovered when he pledged a fraternity.
However, even while passing for white, Powell's soul was blacker than an old used cast iron skillet. In his teens, he was a notorious hipster and gadfly in Harlem's Jazz Culture. He boasted of knowing Duke Ellington personally and provided bootleg liquor and chorus girls at college and fraternity parties. Upon graduation, Powell became involved in his father's church as an assistant pastor. While he was privileged, Powell did not hide within the warm walls of Abyssinian. This was the period of american social misery known as the Great Depression. Starvation and famine was rampant all throughout the country. Harlem, of course, was the worst of the worst. It was said that grown men fought over bones in the trash and 63% of the children suffered from malnutrition.
Facing a sea of human suffering, Powell emerged from the Church to do battle. He opened a soup kitchen to feed the hungry. Set up a job bank for the unemployed. Also created an adult education program, a nursery school(daycare program), young employment program, and a mental health clinic. But he didn't stop there. Unlike other ministers before or since, Powell not only dealt with the symptoms of black suffering he took up his sword against its' roots.
Taking his crusade to the streets, in 1941, he organized his parishioners into picket lines along 125th Street and conducted the earliest boycott in Black American history against a bus company that resulted in the hiring of black bus drivers and mechanics. He eradicated discriminatory hiring practices in all the stores on 125th street, as well as, the power, telephone, baking and pharmaceutical companies. Not surprisingly, he was later elected as a New York City Councilman. But, his reputation made him a big fish in a small pond and Powell was never content to stay in the minor leagues.
In 1943, a new congressional district was opened for the Harlem community. Adam Powell announced his candidacy for the newly opened congressional seat. He did this at the expense of another great black american labor leader: A. Phillip Randolph. Displaying a kind of political chicanery and opportunism that would later play a major part in his demise, Powell straight jacked the microphone as a speaker for Randolph and announced his intention to run before Randolph ever made it to the microphone. Harlemites didn't mind the scandalous substitution. Powell rode a tidal wave all the way into office as he secured both the republican and democratic party nominations. He single-handedly de-segregated Capitol Hill public spaces by conducting impromptu sit-ins. Of particular note was when Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi took great offense to Powell's election to Congress and vowed never to sit next to him. Powell simply followed Rankin from seat to seat all over the room. He(Rankin) moved 5 times before finally leaving the congressional chamber.
However, as a Congressman, Powell was devastatingly effective in creating legislature that would chip away at segregation. He devised something called "The Powell Amendment." Apparently, this amendment denied federal funds to states that segregated public spaces. This act won him the ire of southern legislatures and enemies that would have their revenge at a later date. He led efforts to create anti-lynching and anti-voting tax legislation. Serving 16 years in Congress, he won the chairmanship of the Labor and Education Committee. He doubled the budget from 450,000,000 to 10,000,000,000 (billion dollars). He drafted 60 major pieces of legislation in 5 years, and never lost one on the floor of Congress. He referred to himself as the first "bad nigger" in Congress. An N.W.A., Powell's reputation later turned the corner in the face of allegations of financial misfeasance and excessive absenteeism in Congress. The gasoline on the fire was the Esther James scandal.
In the Harlem numbers racket, it was widely known that the NYPD was in the pocket of the Italian gangsters. The gangsters paid the police to bust the black numbers runners while ignoring the runners employed in their (the Italian gangsters) number houses. To initiate the bribe, the mob paid the police through an elderly black maid named Esther James. James made these payments in the proverbial brown paper bag and thus earned the title of the bag woman of Harlem. When Harlem policy racketeers addressed these grievances to Harlem crime boss Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson, he relayed them to Powell. Powell took this issue to the floor of Congress and to the media. Powell called out the NYPD directly and indicated that James was the bag lady for the mob. Legally, Powell should've had some immunity from prosecution for the statements. The shocking truth was that James really was in fact, a bag lady. However, James later sued Powell for defamation and won a judgment for over $200,000.00. The peculiar thing about the whole situation was that Esther James, a below minimum wage earning maid, somehow obtained counsel from New York's most prominent attorneys. Such an occurrence smacked of a plot to destroy Powell. When Powell refused to pay the judgment, the Court issued a criminal contempt order for him. Powell responded by simply refusing to come to New York except on Sunday, when court documents could not be served. But this was just the beginning of his long and painful descent from power.
After charges of nepotism due to putting his 3rd wife on the federal payroll when she not working, misuse of travel vouchers by him and his staff, as well as his failure to settle the James affair, Congress saw its' opportunity to rid itself of the nauseous presence of Adam Clayton Powell. They excluded him from Congress altogether. They vacated his seat and ordered a special election. But Powell was the undisputed lord of Harlem politics. And without spending a penny, and while fishing in his vacation island retreat in Bimini, he won re-election easily. He later took Congress to the Supreme Court and won his seat back. Not to be outdone, Congress gave him the finger by stripping him of his seniority, which stripped him of his powerful chairmanship of the Labor & Education Committee, and fined him $25,000.00. His response: to simply go AWOL.
His absenteeism, the fine and the removal of his seniority was not Powell's most trying experience of adversity. It was prostate cancer. Powell, overwhelmed by his enemies, and now headed to the grave, simply gave up. In a nail-biting election, he was narrowly defeated by Charlie Rangel, a man who himself would later face the same charges of financial malfeasance. In subsequent years, the memory of his legacy and accomplishments have been carried only by his sons, Adam Powell IV, a New York City Councilman and Adam Powell III. Although a statue of him adorns the Harlem State Office on 125th Street, and a street in Harlem bears his name, he was largely a whisper of a turbulent past in the memory of black America. That was until the HBO 2002 remake of his life: Keep the Faith Baby! (A line from his greatest sermon)
So just who was Adam Clayton Powell Jr? Was he a charlatan? a demagogue? a savior or saint? I guess it depends on who you ask. His reputation clearly establishes him as a fighter for the liberation and empowerment of the Black Community. But in later years, his reputation was stained by his selfish behavior which painted him as somewhat of an opportunist and self-serving hedonist. But if weighed on the eternal scales of history, he was a flawed man who did many things wrong, but did a hell of a lotta shit right! And for that he deserves the immortal status of one of Black America's greatest heroes. For more articles like this, subscribe to our mailing list or the You Tube Channel. Feel free to like, share and subscribe the videos. You can also donate here or become a patron at power of strategies on patreon. Till next time Keep the Faith Baby!
