The Irony of Adam
LYONS, RICHARD L.
'BORN, BRED IN THE BRIER PATCH' The Irony of Adam By Richard L. Lyons Washington Well, the House of Representatives kicked out Adam Powell and members were able to go home for the week-end and...
...His lawyers told him to keep quiet because, they contended, the House had no power to inquire beyond whether he met the constitutional qualifications for office...
...Powell's ouster was not racism run rampant as he charged, but undoubtedly it will be so construed by a large part of the nation's Negro community...
...In the past, Congress has put up with almost anything from its members, considering them sovereign powers elected by and responsible only to their constituents...
...Was he all that bad...
...One colleague said of him that Powell had all the qualities for greatness except that "he has an attention span of not over two minutes...
...But MacGregor and the committee decided that from both a political and constitutional standpoint it would be better to seat and punish Powell than to throw him out and make him a martyr certain to be re-elected...
...Among Powell's more serious and needless problems are the difficulties he has experienced since appearing on television seven years ago and carelessly calling a Harlem widow a "bag woman"—graft collector—for New York policemen...
...The constitutional question troubling the lawyer-members of the committee was whether the House can refuse to seat a duly elected member who meets the qualifications of age, citizenship and inhabitancy in his state listed in the Constitution...
...The House is even getting a bit jittery about relatives on the payroll...
...So the House beat up on Adam and got the satisfaction of revenge and the hometown headlines...
...Congress admittedly has the constitutional power to punish its members for "disorderly behavior" and to expel a member by a two-thirds vote...
...The rest Powell allegedly spent, while chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, to fly with his beauty-queen secretary to Bimini...
...Also on the wall are prize sailfish Adam caught off Bimini...
...Yet the fact is Powell bores quickly and probably lacks the perseverance to run a major movement for long...
...But the vote to bar him from the House, to which he had been elected for a 12th term with 74 per cent of the vote, was not cast with a calm deliberation that considered the constitutional issues, the right of Harlem to be represented by a bad guy if it so chose, or even the political practicalities for the House itself...
...Representative Clark MacGregor of Minnesota said: "Adam Clayton Powell's morals are shocking, his conduct is revolting, his character is disreputable, and he has repeatedly insulted the members of this body and the House of Representatives as an institution...
...This produced one of the most tangled court suits in history, caused by his repeated refusals to pay the defamation judgment returned against him or to appear in court to talk about it...
...Powell's lawyers maintained that if the House added to these qualifications, it would be setting a precedent for expelling anyone a transient majority did not like...
...But was he as bad as the poison of McCarthyism which brought only a slap on the wrist...
...A prized possession is a letter from President Johnson framed on the Representative's office wall warmly commending his record of achievement on his fifth anniversary as chairman...
...Some liberals voted to keep him out, while some conservatives with no enthusiasm for civil rights voted to seat him...
...Not that the swinging Harlem clergyman didn't deserve to be punished...
...BORN, BRED IN THE BRIER PATCH' The Irony of Adam By Richard L. Lyons Washington Well, the House of Representatives kicked out Adam Powell and members were able to go home for the week-end and tell voters how they finally got rid of that arrogant so-and-so...
...But the House decided Powell had brought it into disrepute...
...He presided over the birth of landmark legislation in the fields of education, employment training and the war on poverty which may do more for the Negro than the demonstrations he took no part in...
...Only five times before in its 180 years has the House excluded— refused to seat—a duly elected member...
...He was found guilty of both civil and criminal contempt and since November had not been able, on penalty of imprisonment, to preach in New York...
...But with Powell out, this question becomes major...
...He would also lose his fancy office suite with balcony in the new Rayburn office building, and the favored parking space for his blue Jaguar...
...But it may leave a bad taste that will not soon disappear...
...If he was all that bad, the House said, he might as well be kept out...
...Powell's standard of public morality, adopted long ago, was this: "As a member of Congress, I have done nothing more than any other member and by the grace of God, I intend to do not one bit less...
...Powell did not help his cause in the public eye by refusing to explain his alleged misconduct to the select committee...
...The right of a district to be represented by the man of its choice has been deemed more important than most forms of misconduct...
...In effect, he was found guilty of stealing, but the courts have never convicted him after a full adversary proceeding where he could question witnesses...
...Members read the hometown headlines, heard the rumblings from the voters, received more mail against Powell than on Vietnam, and came back determined to kick him out...
...Perhaps considered in a vacuum he was...
...Politically, they argued, kicking him out would be like throwing Br'er Rabbit in the brier patch...
...Powell reached his heights during the last six years as chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee...
...This statement is probably irrelevant...
...But that wasn't enough...
...Looking back over the years, the vote to kick him out may have been inevitable and the actual breaking point unimportant...
...In 1962 he toured Paris on public funds with two pretty secretaries...
...The select committee set up to Richard L. Lyons covers Capitol Hill for the Washington Post...
...He saw nothing inconsistent in taking three wives and establishing other close relationships, however, or in sipping scotch and milk at the End of the World bar on Bimini, a sagging shack where he plays dominoes after a day of fishing...
...Powell fought for civil rights before it was popular, and though he took little interest in the movement during the last crucial decade, he is a giant symbol to many Negroes...
...In addition to this unprecedented punishment, the committee sent its records to the Justice Department for possible prosecution...
...The House has acted as a court of appeals and overturned Harlem's judgment at the polls...
...The courts decide criminal cases...
...Besides the fine, it proposed to humiliate the proud Powell...
...Was he as bad as members selling their vote for big campaign contributions from vested interests...
...He walked into Congress in 1943 through the front door and kept up a running fight against the white establishment...
...So Representative Thomas B. Curtis was selected by the Republican leadership to offer a proposal for exclusion...
...But it was another reason Congressmen could give for voting him out...
...Most of the cases involved momentary hysteria...
...He had already lost his committee chairmanship (taken away by his Democratic colleagues...
...Rabbits thrive in briers which seem prickly to others...
...The House cannot start and end an ethics crusade with the best known Negro in public life...
...The prison sentence and disclosures of his fancy travel and payroll came tumbling out on top of each other during the last Congressional recess...
...He could at least further sour the civil rights movement if he chose to lash back...
...The punishment was the most severe ever recommended against a member...
...After being sworn in, he would be taken by the sergeant-at-arms to the well of the House and forced to stand humbly while the Speaker read off a resolution of censure...
...It's difficult to dislike Powell...
...An engaging rogue," one exasperated member called him...
...No one spoke a word in defense of Powell's conduct...
...If the courts now decide in Powell's favor, the decision could produce one of the gravest confrontations in history between two branches of the Federal government...
...None took his case to court...
...But he had outraged the country, and within the House he had exposed the little goodies available to all so long as they were enjoyed quietly...
...The vote was in good measure an act of emotionalism, vengeance and fear that the people back home would settle for nothing less...
...If he were white, he'd have been kicked out years ago," was often heard in the cloakrooms...
...This was one reason the select committee wanted to seat him— to keep him in the House on a string rather than make him a tiger on the loose...
...It will be forced to do something about setting up and enforcing standards of conduct for other members...
...investigate Powell found that he had "willfully and wrongfully" appropriated to his own use at least $46,000 in public funds...
...The last was in 1921 when Victor Berger, a Milwaukee Socialist who opposed World War I and was convicted under a wartime sedition act, was kept out...
...He swashbuckled his way from Paris night clubs to Bimini, always with a pretty girl while his wives were elsewhere...
...Powell is the eloquent pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, a position inherited from his father...
...When he was discovered in a nightclub with other Congressmen, he said a visitor could not be expected to spend all his time at the Louvre...
...Now there will be less loose committee spending on questionable travel...
...This was good politics in Harlem where "whitey" is the enemy...
...Almost certainly it will establish an ethics committee, or something that looks like an ethics committee, and Powell ironically will go down in history as the father of the ethical code of the House of Representatives...
...The question raised by the Powell case is whether it has the power, and if so whether it is good public policy, to bar the door by a simple majority vote to a duly elected Representative...
...He lived up to the letter of this credo, openly and casually using the public purse to enjoy the good life...
...Most of this came from keeping his estranged wife illegally on his Congressional payroll while she lived in Puerto Rico without working and he allegedly pocketed most of her $20,578 salary...
...Powell can demagogue with the best and might, if he had the staying power, form a Negro party...
...Chairman Celler, declaring Powell "as irritating as a hangnail," said he should be seated because of the constitutional question...
...The committee was troubled by this question yet did not try to decide it, recommending simply that the Congressman from Harlem be seated and punished...
...Berger was excluded twice, in 1919 and 1921, but his conviction eventually was overturned and he was seated...
...According to the evidence, he was, in the words of a member of the committee that judged him, a "bad guy," casually misusing public funds to lead the good life...
...Outside the South, which voted almost solidly against him, this was probably true...
...One good result may flow from the Powell affair...
...The defendant being a Negro, though he could pass as a white man, members felt obliged to swear repeatedly that no racial prejudice influenced their vote against Powell, a symbol to Black America...
...He thumbed his nose at the world while his Harlem constituents told critics, "Man, does that cat know how to live...
...If Powell were a white man from any district other than Harlem, he would not have found it necessary to prove that he could do and get away with anything a white man could...
...Powell was never accused of selling his vote...
...The committee, headed by the dean of the House, Representative Emanuel Celler of Brooklyn, recommended that Powell be seated but that he also be publicly censured, fined $40,000 and stripped of all seniority...
...It was a sad affair, caused by a lack of self-discipline on everyone's part, that is not likely to be remembered as one of the House's finest hours...
...The Congressional district that most needs representation has none, and if Powell is re-elected and again barred it may be without representation for a long time...
...Congress has always protected its drunks, closed its eyes to conflict of interest, and accepted convicted felons into its ranks without a murmur...
...But it acted as acid in the House, where for years the members sat silent—angry, outraged, envious—while the pressure to kick Adam out mounted until finally, like a volcano, it erupted...
Vol. 50 • March 1967 • No. 6
