No Home in the House

It was a scene of wild incongruity. On a tennis court near the Bimini Hotel one day last week, Baptist Preacher Adam Clayton Powell led an assemblage of curious cronies, touring Seventh-day Adventists and bemused newsmen in what he solemnly described as an interdenominational service. He took his text from Jeremiah 8:4: "When men fall, do they not rise again?"

It was a fitting question, considering the spectacular fall that Congressman Powell had taken earlier in the week. By an overwhelming majority of nearly 3 to 1, rebellious House members overrode their leaders, scrapped the recommendations of a select committee and voted to exclude Powell from the 90th Congress for his well-documented wrongdoings. The vote reflected not only their sentiment but the nation's as well.

Not for 46 years has a member-elect been barred, and only six times since the Civil War has the House exacted the supreme legislative penalty--exclusion.* Drastic as the action was, a majority of the House was determined to make Powell's punishment fit his offenses --and they were numerous. Since he was first elected in 1944, Powell has cheerfully collected enemies with his arrogance, his blatant junketing and his spoiler's role in upsetting arduously achieved compromises. To this woeful record, two investigatory panels in recent months added evidence of payroll irregularities and misappropriation of congressional travel funds. To top it all off, he was unable to enter his home state, thanks to jail sentences imposed by New York courts for civil and criminal contempt.

Both Hands Full. During the House debate, no one tried to pardon Powell's peccadilloes. Even his staunchest defender--Michigan Democrat John Conyers, a Negro--argued that he should be censured. In light of the evidence and the fact that the mail of some Congressmen was running 100 to 1 against seating Powell, the chief dispute concerned the severity of his penalty.

The select committee, chaired by Brooklyn's Emanuel Celler, dean of the House, had proposed public censure, loss of all seniority and a $40,000 fine --but not exclusion. Powell's "wrongdoing," said Celler, "does not rise to the heights of malevolence such as treason."

Plenty of Congressmen thought that the heights attained by Adam were pretty dizzying, nonetheless. Missouri Republican Thomas Curtis denounced Powell for "embezzlement and forgery, not to mention such things as scofflaw actions." To objections from scattered Representatives that the censure proposal would constitute "annihilation by humiliation," South Carolina Republican Albert Watson replied: "As far as I know, he is down in Bimini with a glass in one hand and a woman in the other. Can you think a man so calloused would be humiliated?"

The first key vote came on a motion to preclude amendments to Celler's resolution; if it failed, the way would be open for an amendment demanding Powell's exclusion. The motion was defeated 222 to 202, with the opposition composed of Southerners, border-state Democrats, a handful of Northern Democrats and Republicans from all sections of the country. The next test was on a Republican motion to substitute exclusion for the punishment proposed by Celler. Gaining strength, the anti-Powell group won this round 248 to 176. On the final vote, to actually bar Powell from the 90th Congress, the count was 307 to 116.

Natural Resources. "If just once," observed Florida Democrat Sam Gibbons afterward, "Adam had come in and said, I made a mistake,' things might have turned out differently." But throughout, Powell was being--Powell. While the House wrangled over his fate, he spent the afternoon playing dominoes in Bimini's End of the World bar, sipping "cowbells" (milk laced with Scotch) supplied by reporters. "If I'm excluded," he said philosophically, "I'll be happy all the time. If I'm not excluded, I'll be happy all the time."

He seemed to mean every word of it. The day after he was barred, Powell sat in the End of the World and appreciatively ogled Tanyiki Delamour, 24, a Haitian exotic dancer whose specialty is the "voodoo drumfire dance." "Don't get too close; you'll set me on fire," Powell warned. His usual constant companion, Corinne Huff, was nowhere in sight.

Through the week, Adam kept up his high spirits. He led barroom hymn sessions, kidded with reporters, took dockside strolls to survey Bimini's natural resources ("Is that all you? he asked one girl in a tight sweater who sauntered past). There was at least some good news to justify his buoyant mood. Exclusion made him eligible for a $15,000 pension--half his regular congressional salary. Better yet, the New York Court of Appeals, highest in the state, lopped $100,000 off the outstanding libel judgment against him and ordered a lower court to reconsider another part of the judgment on technical grounds. This left him owing only some $23,000, also opened the way for removal of the contempt citations.

Slap in the Face. Few Negroes took Powell's disgrace as calmly as Adam did. CORE's Floyd McKissick called the House vote a "slap in the face to every black man in this country." Ralph Bunche, Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin joined in the chorus. At least one Negro who criticized the House for excluding a Negro also condemned Powell for his conduct.

Executive Director Roy Wilkins of the N.A.A.C.P. accused him of "wrecking the civil rights movement" because he is "out for himself only."

Powell's color certainly cost him votes among Southern Democrats, who sat back and quietly enjoyed the debate, saying little. But Arizona Democrat Morris Udall insisted that color had nothing to do with his exclusion and actually prevented the House from bouncing him sooner. "If he'd been white," said Udall, "we'd have gotten him a long time ago. This racism thing held a lot of people off."

Not all of the protest was stated in black-and-white terms. Among some white observers there was concern that the House had perhaps gone too far. They noted that Powell had, after all, been re-elected in November by a 74% majority in a constituency that was fully aware of his record. If he chooses to enter the special election in Harlem's 18th District, he will undoubtedly win and return, as Celler said, "to haunt the House." Though the wording of the exclusion measure seems to bar Powell for the duration of the 90th Congress, the presentation of a new election certificate would probably force the House to act again to exclude him.

Powell, who called the exclusion action a "second Dred Scott decision," plans to challenge it on constitutional grounds. Indeed, the case could develop into a monumental constitutional clash, and if the courts were to rule in Powell's favor, it could result in a historic confrontation between legislative and judicial branches.

Powell said his lawyers would argue in federal court that the Constitution sets only three requirements for House membership--age, U.S. citizenship and state residence--and that Powell satisfies all three. But Article 1 of the Constitution makes Congress the judge of the "elections, returns and qualifications of its own members." Thus there is some question whether the courts would want to get involved in a scrap with the House over its own rules--or would be able to enforce a decision.

Dirty Hands. Whatever the legal and political fallout, the most fundamental problem confronting Congress in the wake of its historic vote last week is that of its own ethics. Now that Powell has been excluded, Capitol Hill can ill afford to coddle other rascals, as it unquestionably has done in the past. In the past 16 years, for example, two House members were allowed to serve out their terms despite conviction for payroll padding, and a third served a four-month prison term for income-tax evasion, won re-election later that year and was subsequently sworn in. Not one of these offenders was censured, let alone expelled.

Already the Powell case has put subtle pressure on both chambers of Congress to re-examine the rules that govern their members. In the Senate, the slow-moving investigation of Connecticut Senator Thomas Dodd's tangled finances is scheduled to resume next week. In the House, proposals to establish an ethics committee are being pushed with new vigor. Said Massachusetts' Freshman Republican Margaret Heckler: "How can the House slap one member's wrists without holding out all members' hands for inspection?"

The Congresswoman has a point. Nonetheless, what nobody can dispute in the Powell case is that Adam's hands were dirty--and deserved the scrubbing they got.

* Victor Berger, a Wisconsin Socialist, was turned away in 1921 because he had been convicted of sedition during World War I. The others were excluded in previous years for pro-Confederate activity, polygamy and sale of official favors.

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