Harlem's First

Harlem's 200,000-odd Negroes had their first representative in the New York City Council this week, and the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. took another step toward becoming the popular hero of U.S. Negroes.

Tall (6 ft. 4 in.), husky (210 lb.), young (33), Adam Powell is handsome, lightskinned, a fluent speaker, a good showman. He went to Colgate University, hurled the javelin on the track team, worked summers as a redcap in Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal. After a year in theological seminary, he stepped into a ready-made job as assistant pastor of his father's Abyssinian Baptist Church, whose 14,000 members are the largest Protestant congregation in the world.

When his father retired four years ago, Powell took over--against the protest of oldsters who had been shocked by his marriage to a radio and nightclub singer, considered him a little too fancy and convivial for a preacher. His sermons dealt with everyday Harlem problems like high rents, jobs, the numbers racket. Afterward he stood in front of his pulpit, kissing the women of his congregation.

He made friends outside the church as well as in. He led a picket line of 10,000 to protest the firing of six Negro doctors at Harlem Hospital, led strikes against landlords who charged Harlem's high rents. He established a committee which has picketed 125th Street stores refusing jobs to Negroes, boasts now that his committee has increased Harlem's annual income by $1,000,000.

Until he ran for Councilman, on a spur-of-the-moment decision, he had been only a sideline politico. His campaign amazed Manhattan politicians. With no machine support, he ran third among six Councilmen elected in New York City. Helpfully, he mailed 200,000 sample ballots to voters, showing how to mark the complicated proportional representation ballot. In Harlem, which gave him some 50,000 No. 1 votes, there were fewer spoiled ballots than anywhere else in the city.

If New York Congressional districts are revised, as seems likely, Councilman Powell may turn up in Washington as Harlem's first Congressman.

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