A Sunday in Harlem

...later, the management allowed them to eat in a corner of the restaurant...

...Williams is much more acceptable to the community than was James Meredith...

...Whatever the actual case, he certainly was in the minds of those men who needed and finally got work...

...There isn't a person in Harlem who doesn't understand the dynamics of that...

...On 125th Street, where he spends many of his Sundays, James Thornhill often talks about how Adam Powell and the hlu opened it all up...

...Today, 125th Street and Seventh Avenue is one of the most popular gathering places in the world for Negroes...

...In 1944-45, for example, when many people would have taken the Federal Aid to Education money first, then tried later to get rid of the discrimination that existed in the schools, Powell enraged many Negroes by holding up the bill...

...As for Meredith himself, Har-lemites felt it was up to them, as Powell's constituents, to decide when he should be unseated and therefore resented the interference from the outside...

...Then the bystander recalled a time, several years back, when Powell had faced opposition for his district leadership...

...In his years as a non-organization man Adam never really got along with the established Negro leaders...

...But on this particular Sunday there seemed to be more drivel than usual, generated by what most people in the 18th District considered a superfluous event—the special April 11 election called by Governor Rockefeller because of Powell's exclusion from the House...

...All the businesses in the area were owned by white people, who refused to employ Negroes—in their stores, at least...

...He and his well-functioning organization, which included the membership of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, spread throughout Harlem, delivering street-corner campaign talks and distributing over 200.000 sample ballots to familiarize the people with the voting method...

...Was Adam in the thick of the fighting...

...Street-corner preachers and part-time orators call it home...

...Unlike the general Negro leadership which never paid much attention to them, Powell has often come to learn what they are saying, so the nationalists saw his plight as an opportunity not merely to aid him but to assert whatever strength they commanded...

...Yet before 1930, 125th Street was segregated from one end to the other...

...NATIONAL REPORTS A Sunday in Harlem By Charlayne Hunter New York On the Sunday that Adam Clayton Powell did not return to Harlem —a week after James H. Meredith quit New York's 18th District Congressional race as the Republican candidate and four days after Mrs...

...Some people say that Powell only showed up when the photographers were about to arrive, and that while many Negroes were bargaining for hiring on a merit basis, he was willing to settle for a specific percentage of jobs...

...Another time, just after he was acquitted on charges of income tax evasion, Powell exhorted his supporters: "In this hour of complete vindication, I shall go forward to see that what happened to me shall not happen to any other person...

...Meredith on the other hand, quite characteristically, had his candidacy launched under a cloud of smoke that made him appear not to know precisely what it was he was doing...

...It is said that sooner or later every black man in the world passes that corner...

...When Powell took his seat, the News editorialized: "With an earnest, kindly word of caution, we congratulate New York's first colored Councilman...

...The usual reason advanced for this discrepancy is that many people may have voted only for governor or lieutenant governor, or that they were unfamiliar with the voting machine and in some way voided their ballots...

...That, plus the inscrutable nature of the man, and the resentment against his being imposed upon them, led Harlemites to feel they just did not have time for him in politics...

...Appropriately, some of the more lively of these discussions took place along 125 th Street, where Powell started his career...

...The men and women who got jobs in Harlem also talk about him...

...He has virtually no political organization in Harlem today, but his political instinct remains keen...

...The scene itself was not unusual...

...The Teresa Hotel, now the headquarters of Haryou-Act, catered exclusively to a white clientele...

...Interestingly, the statistics indicate that Powell's prowess as a vote getter does not quite equal the myth...

...What Harlem needs, they explained, is organization, and if the Republican party suddenly rose from the dead to push a candidate, the Democratic party in Harlem would have to revitalize itself...

...But they woke up too late to help save the thing they are now fighting to regain—Powell's power base in the House...

...How effective his tenure in office will be depends entirely on how effectively, in and out of the Council chamber, he uses these natural advantages...

...His challenger's organization and staff were too meager to cover all of the assembly districts, yet where the opposition did have workers, it was successful...

...In the early '40s...

...Pro-Powell people who thought Meredith's timing was bad yet conceded that it was all right for him to run, saw the contest per se as a healthy sign...

...This prompted a man standing within earshot to interject that Powell knew this better than any of them...

...When the press maligns Powell, it isn't taken seriously by Harlem...

...Thus, in spite of the overwhelming, often irrational condemnation of Powell by the nation's press, Negroes continue to support him— especially in the strict context of Realpolitik...

...Weather permitting, it occurs every Sunday, regardless of the presence or absence of issues...

...Powell hammered away at discriminatory practices in New York City and won the seat as an Independent, receiving the third highest number of votes of the six successful candidates from Manhattan...

...But that was Arthur Reid's funeral...

...Collectively, it supported Powell in his fight, which it saw as a "dialogue between Adam and the 90th Congress...

...Twenty years later, Powell's position became the law of the land...

...At Arthur Reid's funeral, James Thornhill, another member of the hlu, spoke only of Reid and his importance to the movement...

...Adam Powell was on the picket line...

...What accounts for Powell's popularity these many years...

...Harlem is not as brainwashed as other areas of the country...

...He has the ability, courage, and popular support to render service...

...And even those who do not owe their jobs to him, who admit that much of the aura surrounding Powell is just talk, see in him an affirmation of their dignity and manhood...

...He argued that no Federal funds should be given to any institution unless it had ended its discriminatory practices...

...In a manner reminiscent of small Southern towns, its citizens love to stop to exchange stories, and they are particularly expert at cutting through the drivel and cant that come at them from the outside...

...For one thing, she lives in Harlem...

...Not long after Powell's election to the City Council, the People's Voice, a newspaper having a circulation of 50,000 people, appeared with twin Vs on its front page—for victory over the Axis powers and victory over bigotry at home...

...for another, it is obvious from most of her statements that she is playing a role...

...Still, the sad fact is that few people in Harlem feel they can defend Adam on all levels, despite their virtually unanimous support for him in his "dialogue with the 90th Congress...

...At Harlem Hospital, they talk about him too...

...Others, like the Amsterdam News (the Harlem weekly, which at one time carried a column by Powell), have not been so ebullient...

...Since that time the News has frequently been an outspoken critic of Powell...

...Thus, the general agreement that no one could defeat Adam on April 11 notwithstanding, immediately after Meredith announced his candidacy Powell's forces began to exert themselves...

...While it is true he received over 70 per cent of the votes cast for Congressman in the 1966 elections, his total of 45,308 represented the support of far less than half the 127,000 registered voters in the 18th District...

...When action taken against him seemed racially motivated, however, it has usually managed a line such as "We do not agree with everything that Congressman Adam Clayton Powell has done . . . but in this case, we do agree that...

...Powell launched a vigorous campaign to become the first Negro on the City Council...

...As usual, a group of nationalists were holding forth on their street corner about the need for black unity...

...A visitor to Harlem the day before Powell's non-visit was also reminded of his knack for accommodating rivals and turning them into supporters...

...Lucille Pickett Williams was selected to take his place—the sidewalk traffic in Harlem was virtually at a standstill...

...Harlem is a neighborhood with a strong sense of community...

...For the most part, they regard the often self-righteous press attacks on Powell as a part of the drivel and cant of the American political game and those who play it...

...He knows his constituents are largely poor people looking for jobs and guidance, not handouts...

...Moreover, of the 92,970 voters who cast ballots in the district last November, only 60,688 voted for the four congressional candidates...

...Williams, in fact, has said flatly that she is running simply to preserve the two party system...

...In typical fashion, the community had reduced the "issues" to a single issue—Adam himself...

...And Powell, despite an impressive victory, went around to the few areas where he was defeated asking, "Okay, fellows, what is it you want...

...In terms of the national scene, the Powell case seemed to come at a time when the civil rights activists needed a relevant issue...

...In the early '30s a group of men calling themselves the Harlem Labor Union (hlu) decided to do something about the situation...

...As an opposition candidate, Mrs...

...Another group of pro-Powell people felt that it was good to have a contest even now, because a record turnout for Adam against an opponent would be greater affirmation of the people's support for Powell and defiance of the 90th Congress...

...It is widely known as "Harlem's Africa Square," and "The Crossroads of the World...

...Against incredible odds...

...An ex-Harlem Baptist minister now preaching on Long Island, he argues that Powell cannot enter the April election at all because of the House of Representatives' refusal to seat him and appears likely to do most of his campaigning in the courts...

...Well, he was on the front pages, and many insist he was at the bargaining table—right or wrong, always charming...

...Frank's, a well-known eating place frequented by Negro businessmen today, did not serve Negro customers when it first opened...

...Led by Arthur Reid, who died a few weeks ago, they organized "Buy Black" and "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" campaigns...

...Among individuals, although everyone seemed likely to back Powell in the end, the talk revolved mainly around Charlayne Hunter, a new contributor, is on the New Yorker's staff...

...Over the years, Powell's symbolic value for Negroes has been important, but not nearly so important as the fact that he was not only the actual elected Representative of Harlem, but also the nation's Negro Congressman-at-Large...

...The same people laugh affectionately and note that although Powell was wrong a lot of the time (and often lazy), he was a born politician who even then knew how to maneuver...

...Powell watchers note that he knows whom and what to ignore— and, more important, whom and what to pay attention to—at least in Harlem...

...not as slaves, not as Uncle Toms, but as free men and women under God...

...Without their help—help from the grass roots—they were saying, Powell could not win...

...As chairman of the Education and Labor Committee— which deals with problems of specific relevance to Negroes everywhere—he was in a position of strength that surpassed, some think, the strength of many of the civil rights activists...

...One Harlemite summed up Powell's appeal this way: "The man as he stands today is a product of the prejudicial environment which he endured for so many years...

...Indeed, he stepped on a lot of toes and some of the time he was right...

...In 1958 when Powell waged an active and successful campaign against Carmine DeSapio's Tammany candidate, he told one crowd: "On Tuesday we'll march to the polls...

...Although not the first Negro in Congress, he was certainly the most outspoken...

...Far greater impatience or, more accurately, indifference has greeted the Conservative candidate, Irvin Yearling...

...so do the city's Negro bus operators and subway conductors, who remember the time when they were not hired for such jobs and the fight that changed all that...

...According to a spokesman at the Republican County Committee office, the 32,282 abstentions would be considered high in any other district, but in the 18th "a lower incidence of intelligence" explains the fact...

...the dialogue between Adam and his constituency over the past 30 years...

...As Malcolm X explained it in 1964: "Powell is more independent of political machinery than any other politician of national stature, principally because he's from Harlem...