King of the cats

by Wil Haygood

"Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., was one of the most brilliant, charismatic, and controversial politicians of this century - and one of the most productive legislators in American history. This vivid and penetrating biography by Wil Haygood, whom Ward Just has praised as "perhaps America's best young reporter," evokes the physical, political, and racial reality of both Powell's life and the civil rights struggle of the twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET. "The grandson of a slave, Powell utilized his father's pulpit in Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church to raise up the poor and disadvantaged during the Great Depression. After marrying a showgirl, starting his own newspaper, and successfully running for city council, he was elected as the first black congressman from Harlem, a seat he held without serious opposition for thirty-odd years.^ He took his second wife, the jazz pianist Hazel Scott, with him to Washington, where he was a tireless crusader for racial equality, a thorn in the side of his