Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
Hamilton, Charles V.
ing the electoral victors to assume office. Humberto Ortega, decidedly not an oligarch, is still el General in a country with a strong military tradition. And tradition, according to Rosenberg, is...
...CI Bert Lance is an amiable big lug out of Central Casting: the Jack Carson part, the Sonny Tufts part, the guy who talks like the toastmaster's handbook...
...Collateral never repaid a loan," said the old banker, and Bert found out how true this was when a farm woman who had borrowed money to buy a cow showed up one day and said, "Mr...
...For all his addiction to fast cars and fast women, Powell's real failing was a deplorable standard of political morality...
...All of which was made possible through the usual forms of graft: kick-backs, no-show jobs for relatives, and what today are called "campaign finance irregularities...
...And tradition, according to Rosenberg, is so powerful that it accounts for the rage of the monteneros in Argentina, the economic "success" of Pinochet in Chile, and the undemocratic behavior of the FSLN in Nicaragua...
...Most people tune out immediately...
...Had he taken himself or his mission more seriously, he could have become a congressional power par excellence...
...Instead, a new pact was negotiated, which today is constantly revised by the Chamorro government...
...He was particularly admired by urban blacks, just emerging as a political force and more drawn to Powell's cynicism and insolence than to Martin Luther King's sermons on the brotherhood of man...
...Lest we forget, he was also a Baptist minister, another reason one could have expected less brazen behavior from a representative of a movement seeking to appeal to America's conscience...
...Powell found many willing listeners whenever he insinuated that the issue of corruption Arch Puddington, formerly an assistant to Bayard Rustin, works for Radio Free Europe–Radio Liberty in New York was contrived by whites to thwart the rise of strong black leadership...
...Lance reasoned that the bank had no use for the cow—meaningless collateral—but the woman did, so he extended her loan on the strength of her demonstrated character and she eventually paid it off...
...He was on the football and baseball teams ("I was introduced to sports, and the valuable lessons about life that you can learn from them"), she was a cheerleader...
...Instead, he is dimly remembered as a symbol of defiance, and, in Harlem, has had an office building and a thoroughfare named for him...
...He always delivered his pitch with a wink and a leer, as if to say that what really disturbed his antagonists was the public spectacle of a black man having so much fun in Washington...
...In what ranks as Powell's most reprehensible action, he threatened to "reveal" a non-existent sexual relationship between King and Bayard Rustin, whose homosexuality was well known in civil rights circles, causing King to dump this loyal and valuable deputy...
...delighted in taunting white politicians of all stripes...
...This reputation is all the more reason to deplore the flattened prose and absence of sharp analysis, weaknesses that seemingly reflect the author's misconceptions about the nature of scholarly biography...
...Rosenberg forgets that Leninism tends to gain hold in societies that are already repressive, producing nasty hybrids: not for nothing has sandinismo been called "scientific somocismo" by Carlos Coronel, a former Sandinista...
...He went to Emory, she to Agnes Scott...
...I sent him a note telling him that the press was saying he looked like one of the Kennedysand now he appeared to be acting like them," writes Bert...
...Powell's cynicism and gluttony for B ert Lance has two problems that will never go away...
...I n Adam Clayton Powell, then, we have the ideal subject for an incisive interpretive biography...
...He could have passed for white, and, indeed was recruited by white fraternities at Colgate (who discovered their error only after undertaking a background check...
...The government, for its part, agrees to bargain with Daniel, in no small measure because President Violeta Chamorro, mother of two prominent Sandinistas, has a familial stake in the durability of the pact...
...At one time or another, he aligned himself with just about every important figure in Harlem, and eventually betrayed them all—on some occasions, atleast, with good reason...
...Unable to make her payments, she had done the honest thing and wanted to hand over her collateral to the bank: it was tied up outside...
...Folks back home found Powell's remarks bewildering, but Powell got what he wanted: controversy, publicity, and a reputation as an authority on foreign policy...
...In another revealing incident, Powell called a press conference to denounce the NAACP as a collection of Uncle Toms, a transparent message to the young militants of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee that only Adam Powell among the movement's elder statesmen was capable of understanding their anger and impatience...
...Hamilton is probably best known as the co-author, with Stokely Carmichael, of Black Power...
...Carter won the governorship in 1970 and appointed Lance state highway director...
...Powell cited increased access to the White House and Adlai Stevenson's uninspiring civil rights achievements as reasons for his action, but the real reason was expectation that the Eisenhower Justice Department would resolve certain problems he was having with the IRS...
...But like most cynics, he was treated with less regard than his abilities merited...
...There is blame enough for all, and such efforts frequently contribute to the very violence being repudiated, as they become ammunition in conflicts that are atavistic yet profoundly complex...
...B y the early sixties, Bert was the youngest bank president in America and a pillar of everything ("It was in high school that LaBelle and I formed our habit of becoming involved in community affairs...
...He craved attention, and thus resented anyone who might upstage him as point man on civil rights...
...Her grandfather gave Bert a job as teller at Calhoun First National so he could learn banking from the ground up...
...For example, El General's brother, Daniel, leads his turbas divinas—mobs—into the streets, and thus exercises de facto executive veto power...
...Martin's Press...
...Florence King is the author, most recently, of With Charity Toward None: A Fond Look at Misanthropy (St...
...My parents saw my birth as an example of the Christian belief that whenever God shuts a door in your life, He opens another one...
...He met his wife, LaBelle, in elementary school and never had another girl...
...We must learn to see the dead not as evidence to use against a foe, an ideology, or a system, but as the implacable advocates for the critical self-examination of the living...
...To divert attention from the corruption charges periodically brought against him, Powell became a master at exploiting urban black obsessions with conspiracy...
...Powell even dropped sponsorship of anti-discrimination legislation deemed inconvenient by the Kennedy Administration, which in return closed the books on an investigation into his financial affairs...
...I THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER: MY LIFE IN AND OUT OF POLITICS Bert Lance with Bill Gilbert Summit Books/ 256 pages/$20 reviewed by FLORENCE KING 76 The American Spectator April 1992...
...He would skewer not only reactionaries like John Rankin of Mississippi but also progressives like Fiorello LaGuardia or, for that matter, FDR himself...
...he is, in fact, a highly respected authority on black history...
...know a man and his family history well enough, and you know whether or not to lend him money...
...With the onset of the Cold War, however, Powell rapidly changed from fellow traveler to red-blooded patriot and anti-Stalinist...
...Lance, I brung you your cow...
...The trouble he got into involved banking, a subject few people understand, especially the English majors in the media who never miss a feeding frenzy no matter how indigestible the fare...
...In the end, nobody has any idea what the accused banker did—and nobody cares except the people who despise him on sight...
...Powell would invariably hide behind a racial shield and accuse his tormentors of much worse, or blame his troubles on the threat he posed to the racial status quo...
...One must always answer in the affirmative...
...To whites he may have been an arrogant loudmouth, but to blacks Powell was an uncompromising opponent of discrimination, a man prepared to stand up for them in every forum and against all adversaries...
...B ut Powell was not just any politician...
...I shuffled my feet...
...He was also a born lieutenant in search of a captain, and Jimmy Carter was a state senator with his eye on the governor's mansion...
...To demonstrate his concern for the cause of freedom, Powell went so far as to abandon his attempt to attach anti-discrimination amendments to military appropriations legislation during the Korean War, a compromise that genuinely patriotic black leaders like A. Philip Randolph would never have countenanced...
...ut money was not always at the root of Powell's less honorable behavior...
...Yet one suspects that the major laws would have emerged essentially unchanged had some liberal white Democrat filled the chairman's seat...
...Nothing more suggests Powell's flair for the dramatic than his selection of this forum, dominated by the world's foremost (and windiest) exponents of anti-Western resentment, to prove his patriotic bona fides by offering fulsome praise for America's race record, declaring that it was a "mark of distinction to be a Negro in the United States...
...That sounded better in 1967 than it does now...
...Carter lost to Lester Maddox in his first try but shortly afterwards he was consoled, if you will, by the birth of daughter Amy...
...A necessary—though not sufficient—condition for such hope is the willingness of observers to abandon all effort at precise assignation of culpability between the camps they perceive as the "left" and the "right...
...As the civil rights revolution moved from the courts to the streets to Congress, Powell, a Democrat with high seniority, was ideally positioned to influence the course of his people's history...
...Character, not collateral, was his grandfather-inlaw's rule of thumb...
...Above all, however, the pact is maintained because it is the quintessential power-sharing arrangement of the Nicaraguan elites...
...Where other Harlem politicos operated out of Tammany clubhouses, unions, racial associations, or cult movements, Powell mobilized from Abyssinian, with its large, relatively stable, and politically aware membership...
...From Jack Johnson to Marcus Garvey to W.E.B...
...He was forever under investigation, and the reactions of press, Republicans, and segregationists were predictably harsh...
...This is the kind of story Southern men tell so well that it's easy to miss the dark vein of existentialism that throbs deep down in the prayer-breakfast brain...
...He never did look up from that newspaper...
...Being despised on sight by those with the power to ruin him is Bert Lance's other problem...
...He missed few opportunities to undermine Martin Luther King...
...There are also indications that Powell sold his endorsement in the 1958 New York gubernatorial race to Averell Harriman for a "contribution" of $50,000...
...ADAM CLAYTON POWELL, JR.: THE POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF AN AMERICAN DILEMMA Charles V. Hamilton Atheneum/545 pages/$24.95 reviewed by ARCH PUDDTNGTON 74 The American Spectator April 1992 His career is filled with examples of lies, betrayals, and venality, all in the service of advancing himself or destroying a rival...
...He won concessions from local merchants and sent more than a few chills down the spines of New York's leaders by threatening to disrupt the 1939 World's Fair...
...He was voted Most Likely to Succeed, she was crowned "Miss Gordon County...
...the hardy few who try to follow it soon grow numb...
...Powell even managed to alienate President Truman by referring to Bess as the "last lady" for attending a tea sponsored by the Daughters of the American Revolution—who had denied Powell's wife of the moment, the jazz pianist Hazel Scott, the right to perform at Constitution Hall...
...Powell acted on the dictum that in politics there are no permanent friends or allies...
...He blames it on anti-Southern prejudice among the media elite, but in fact it's an American thing, and Sinclair Lewis would understand it...
...Life with the man Bella Abzug called "a little fart" was not easy for a big lug: I knocked on the door of the governor's office and Jimmy called out to me to come in...
...One kind of corruption often led to another...
...he claimed the mantle of racial leadership at a delicate point in Negro history...
...But like all the others, it will bring only temporary peace to the rival blocs, and more violence to the country...
...bourgeois luxury made him immune to the bitterness toward America that has infected so many other black leaders...
...Harlem, meanwhile, was already the most color-conscious community in black America: Was Powell's racial bravado motivated by a fear of being outflanked by someone claiming to be more "authentic...
...He liked to think of himself as the most important Negro in America, which he wasn't, and as a formidable deal-maker in Congress, which he was...
...i/ n his heyday, he was regarded by many as America's most notorious black militant...
...His greatest lesson was the difference between country and city banks...
...Meanwhile, Powell was subverting the very programs he helped write, by using a Harlem antipoverty agency as a base for patronage...
...There is, unfortunately, another Powell legacy, epitomized in the career of the disgraced former District of Columbia mayor Marion Barry, who too was once a respected protest leader who ultimately let his people down...
...The problem is that Powell was quite thoroughly corrupt...
...He was reading the paper when I entered the room, and he kept right on reading it...
...Although Charles V. Hamilton earns high marks for thoroughness and objectivity, his plodding style and stubborn refusal to make informed judgments about Pow-ell's character and career make this book less powerful than it should have been...
...The American Spectator April 1992 75 As chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, Powell helped shape the civil rights legislation of the 1960s...
...In the 1930s and '40s, Powell worked closely with the Communist party, a major force in New York black politics...
...I waited, and then I waited some more...
...While comparison with such firebrands as Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown does insult to his memory, there's no question that Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr...
...His rise was facilitated by certain personal attributes: a brilliant oratorical style, an innate sense for scheming, ideological flexibility, and an absence of snobbery...
...In 1956, Powell abandoned the Democratic ticket to endorse President Eisenhower's re-election, despite Ike's unimpressive civil rights record and personal coolness toward the very idea of race-mixing...
...He gave her his Sigma Chi pin and soon they were married...
...He comes from the town of Calhoun in the North Georgia mountains, where introspection is probably not encouraged...
...In the course of a power struggle over the agency, Powell thrust aside the respected psychologist, Kenneth Clark, but not before trying to buy him off, telling Clark: "Kenneth, with your brains and my power we could split millions...
...In short, he makes people think of Babbitt, and that's enough for the pseudo-intellectuals of the scribbling classes...
...The party-line editorial content of a newspaper he operated even drew the interest of the FBI...
...But the Sandinistas' repression seemed to me less an outgrowth of Leninism than an outgrowth of Nicaragua, with its political culture shaped by its authoritarianism and violent traditions...
...The youngest of four, he was born in 1931, shortly after his seemingly healthy older brother died without warning of a cerebral hemorrhage...
...S o is there hope for the children of Cain...
...Nor was power returned to the oligarchy: it was never really taken away...
...Well before King, Powell used the pulpit as a base for political protest...
...He enjoyed the good life, and shamelessly used his congressional post to satisfy his appetite for wine, women, song, and foreign travel...
...Leninism," she asserts, "is repressive by its very nature...
...Then there was Powell's performance at the 1955 Bandung conference, which officially launched the "Non-aligned Movement" that was to torment American diplomacy for the next three decades...
...For example, one wishes that Hamilton had engaged in a little speculation on the role Powell's light skin color played in his pretensions to super-militancy...
...DuBois, blacks had witnessed the persecution of outspoken leaders whose only crime, it appeared, was to speak and act independently...
...Powell's most admirable period was his early years as pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church, the huge Harlem congregation established by his father, a modest and serious man whose demeanor contrasted sharply with his son's...
...The only way an accused banker can tell his side of the story is to deliver monologues on compound interest and read aloud from balance sheets...
Vol. 25 • April 1992 • No. 4
