In 1961, after 16 years in the House, Powell became chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, the most powerful position held by an African American in Congress to that date.

As chairman, he supported the passage of important social and civil rights legislation under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

[9] In the year of his son's birth in New Haven, Powell Sr. was called as the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City.

He led the church for decades through major expansion, including fundraising for and the construction of an addition to accommodate the increased membership of the congregation during the years of the Great Migration, as many African Americans moved north from the South.

[4] He attended Townsend Harris High School, then studied at City College of New York before starting at Colgate University as a freshman.

She appeared to have named her son after her older brother Adam Dunning, listed on the 1860 census as a farmer and the head of their household.

He greatly increased the volume of meals and clothing provided to the needy, and began to learn more about the lives of the working class and poor in Harlem.

[citation needed] During the Great Depression in the 1930s, Powell, a handsome and charismatic figure, became a civil rights leader in Harlem.

As chairman of the Coordinating Committee for Employment, Powell used numerous methods of community organizing to bring political pressure on major businesses to open their doors to black employees at professional levels.

He organized mass meetings, rent strikes, and public campaigns to force companies, utilities, and Harlem Hospital, which operated in the community, to hire black workers at skill levels higher than the lowest positions, to which they had formerly been restricted by informal discrimination.

[25] In 1944, Powell ran for the United States Congress on a platform of civil rights for African Americans: support for "fair employment practices, and a ban on poll taxes and lynching."

Requiring poll taxes for voter registration and voting was a device used by southern states in new constitutions adopted from 1890 to 1908 to disenfranchise most blacks and many poor whites, to exclude them from politics.

[28] Powell was elected as a Democrat and defeated Republican candidate Sara Pelham Speaks to represent the Congressional District that included Harlem.

Powell worked closely with Clarence Mitchell Jr., the representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Washington, D.C., to try to gain justice in federal programs.

In 1958, he survived a determined effort by the Tammany Hall Democratic Party machine in New York to oust him in the primary election.

In 1960, Powell, hearing of planned civil rights marches at the Democratic Convention, which could embarrass the party or candidate, threatened to accuse Rev.

He urged presidential policymakers to pay attention to nations seeking independence from colonial powers and support aid to them.

He made a positive international impression in public addresses that balanced his concerns of his nation's race relations problems with a spirited defense of the United States as a whole against Communist criticisms.

[citation needed] With this influence, Powell suggested to the State Department that the current manner of competing with the Soviet Union in the realm of fine arts such as international symphony orchestra and ballet company tours was ineffective.

It successfully reported to Congress "49 pieces of bedrock legislation", as President Johnson put it in a May 18, 1966, letter congratulating Powell on the fifth anniversary of his chairmanship.

[35] Powell was instrumental in passing legislation that made lynching a federal crime, as well as bills that desegregated public schools.

[2] When under scrutiny by the press and other members of Congress for personal conduct—he had taken two young women at government expense with him on overseas travel—he responded:I wish to state very emphatically... that I will always do just what every other Congressman and committee chairman has done and is doing and will do.

A series of hearings on Powell's misconduct had been held by the 89th Congress in December 1966 that produced the evidence that the House Democratic Caucus cited in taking this action.

Its chairman was Emanuel Celler of New York and its members were James C. Corman, Claude Pepper, John Conyers, Andrew Jacobs Jr., Arch A. Moore Jr., Charles M. Teague, Clark MacGregor, and Vernon W. Thomson.

The status of legal proceedings to which Mr. Powell was a party in the State of New York and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico with particular reference to the instances in which he has been held in contempt of court; and 3.

Pepper was strongly in favor of recommending that Powell not be seated at all, while Conyers, the only African American Representative on the Select Committee, felt that any punishment beyond severe censure was inappropriate.

[42] Powell's increasing absenteeism was observed by constituents, which contributed, in June 1970, to his defeat in the Democratic primary for reelection to his seat by Charles B.

[2] Powell failed to garner enough signatures for inclusion on the November ballot as an Independent, and Rangel won that (and following) general elections.

[47][48] Yvette Diago admitted to the committee that she had been on the Congressional payroll of her former husband, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., from 1961 until 1967, although she had moved back to Puerto Rico in 1961.

After his funeral at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, his son, Adam III, poured his ashes from a plane over the waters of Bimini.