The Curse of Adam

As the 90th U.S. Congress convenes this week, it will be shadowed from the start by an irritating, embarrassing dilemma: what to do about Adam Clayton Powell, the errant, arrogant Democratic Representative from Harlem.

Until last week, Powell's most flagrant public sin was his defiance of the New York courts that have sentenced him to a 16-month jail term for contempt (he has consistently refused to pay a defamation judgment won by a Harlem Negro widow). Then, on the eve of the new session, the Negro Congressman was hit from a new direction. Reporting on a three-month investigation of the financial affairs of the House Education and Labor Committee, of which Powell is chairman, House probers concluded that

>Powell and Corinne Huff, a Negro beauty-contest winner, whom he had put on his committee payroll at $19,200 a year, took "many airline flights" that were charged to the taxpayers under assumed names.

>Other air trips were charged on the credit cards of committee employees who did not in fact make them.

> Powell put a Negro girl, Sylvia Givens, 20, on the committee payroll as a "clerk," then used her for "domestic work"; Miss Givens testified that she worked as a cook and maid at his retreat on South Bimini Island in the Bahamas.

> Powell kept his estranged wife Yvette on his Washington payroll at $20,578 a year, although she is living in Puerto Rico. The subcommittee recommended that she be fired, and she promptly was, although the dismissal seemed likely to hurt Adam more than Yvette, since he has been regularly banking her paychecks (while sending her an undisclosed allowance).

"Soul Brother." Outwardly undisturbed by the furor in Washington, Powell continued to disport himself on Bimini (which he calls "Adam's Eden") in the company of the comely Corinne (whom he calls "Huffie"). By now, Powell treats the Bimini natives as if they were his constituents. Whether holding forth at his favorite hangout, Brown's Hotel bar in the tumbledown gingerbread village of Alice Town--where he sips Beck's beer and "cowbells" (Cutty Sark and milk)--or slapping backs on the street, Powell calls the Biminians "my kin" and "soul brother." At week's end, he prepared reluctantly to leave them and face his troubles back home.

This week's House Democratic caucus would doubtless approach the Powell problem with the utmost diffidence, even though the pressure was on to corral him. Sensing that this was the case, Powell issued a statement condemning efforts to dump him from his committee chairmanship as part of a "conspiracy of enormous dimensions." His critics, he said, "are trying to politically castrate one of America's most powerful Negro politicians." If they persist, Powell hinted, he would blow the whistle on other congressional sinners. And, though many if not most Negro leaders privately hold Powell in contempt, they were mounting a massive campaign to protect the black power he personifies.

All week, Democrats from Lyndon Johnson on down were frantically searching for an alternative to the obvious: that Congress should exercise its constitutional right to be the judge of its own members by at least censuring Powell, if not kicking him out. California Democrat Lionel Van Deerlin, for one, was determined to request the House to ask Powell to "stand aside" pending an investigation. Even Powell's wife seemed to think further investigation was in order. In a San Juan interview, Yvette insisted that she "would like to help" her husband. "But I realize he is a public servant," she added, "and I think it is right for the Congress to investigate if they choose."

Whatever the outcome, it was increasingly plain that failure to discipline Powell--a lawmaker who scoffs at the law--could only add to the Democratic leadership's already heavy political burdens, to say nothing of its obligations to the integrity of the U.S. Congress.

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