Monday, Mar. 21, 1960
The Powell Amendments
Into a Manhattan federal courtroom last week strode the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., 51, pastor of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church, longtime (eight terms) U.S. Democratic Congressman and alltime prince of New York City's big (900,000) Negro community. Handsome, carefully tailored Adam Powell was uncommonly nervous. After many and sundry delays the U.S. had finally haled him before a jury on two-year-old charges of dodging federal income taxes. The indictment charged that Powell, in filing 1951 and 1952 tax returns for himself and his estranged wife, Jazz Pianist Hazel Scott, had defrauded the Government of $3,032.69 by paying only $1,690 in taxes on total earnings of $158,500.
Powell did it by making some delectable deductions, said Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Morton Robson in his opening address to the jury. Among other things, said Robson, Pastor Powell wrote off:
P: Virtually all his personal expenses: insurance premiums, 40% of his electricity and fuel bills, all telephone bills, theater tickets, and department-store purchases including furs and jewelry, pillow cases and pajamas.
P: Washington-New York railroad transportation expenses of $2,536 in one eight-month period, which meant that Powell--who bought round-trip tickets at the clergymen's half-price of $11--would have had to make at least 200 round trips in the year.
P: A $500-a-year liquor bill, personal dinners at Manhattan's "21" and Sardi's, the cost of his son's private schooling, the price of two TV sets and two boats at one of his homes in fashionable Westhampton, L.I.
P: Living expenses for ten months in Washington during 1951, a year when he spent four months out of the country.
P: $237 for clerical garb, though he actually spent only $2.37--for button-in-the-back collars.
Despite the gravity of the charges, Powell's flock remained true. A dozen Negro ministers, dressed in clerical garb, were among the 150 Harlem supporters who hovered outside the packed courtroom. Some prayed in the hallways. They had reason: if convicted, Congressman Powell could draw a $10,000 fine and five years in prison on each of three counts.
Last week Powell was also accused, by New York's Liquor Salesmen's Union, of warning the owners of Harlem liquor stores that they would be picketed unless they started buying from Negro instead of white salesmen. The union charged that he had advised the stores in a letter: "I have set April 1 as a firm deadline for action should it be deemed necessary." One storekeeper said the letter came to him under Powell's congressional frank.
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