The Loner & the Shaman

The most significant question still to be settled in the Adam Clayton Powell case is whether the House of Representatives had the constitutional right to deny him admission for the specific offenses with which he was charged. While his lawyers raised this issue in federal court last week, Powell himself unexpectedly became the target of a political challenge in his Harlem fiefdom.

Powell's exclusion from Congress automatically created a vacancy in the 18th District; to fill it, a special election was set for April 11. Powell was assured of the Democratic nomination for the seat he has already won twelve times--even though, as seemed likely, the House might continue to deny it to him. Then James Meredith, 33, the moody loner of the civil rights movement who is now a Columbia law student, announced that he would accept Manhattan Republican Chairman Vincent Albano's invitation to oppose Powell.

"Tetched." In 1962, Meredith risked his life in the battle to integrate the University of Mississippi. Last year, while taking a "march against fear" through his home state, he had shotgun pellets fired into him by a white racist. But from far-off Bimini, Powell, whose zestful pursuit of the sporting life has betrayed the Negroes' trust in him for years, branded Meredith as the "white man's candidate."

Still prevented from visiting New York by contempt-of-court citations that could jail him, Powell said that he would not have to campaign anyway. Nevertheless, reinforced by the presence of CORE'S Floyd McKissick, he got in a few licks for the benefit of reporters and TV cameras. "Long before Mr. Meredith was having his diapers changed," he mocked, "I was walking the streets of Harlem on picket lines." Noting that Meredith describes himself as an "independent Democrat," Powell observed that "anybody who is a Democrat running on the Republican ticket has got to be a little tetched in the head." No one was nasty enough to remind Powell that in 1956 he bolted his party to support Dwight Eisenhower.

If Powell's arrogant comments were predictable, Negro reaction back home to Meredith's bid was irrationally hostile. It was as if the uncontested elections of the old Solid South--the kind that kept the Negro down for so long--had become Harlem's ideal of democracy. Negro Author (Manchild in the Promised Land) Claude Brown, an old friend of Meredith, called him "an ass, an absolute ass." Said Jackie Robinson, a Republican and a civil rights moderate: "No self-respecting Negro should have involved himself in this thing." The Amsterdam News, the Negro weekly, bannered: NEGRO REPUBLICANS OUTRAGED. In Harlem there was open talk of assassination--and in view of the 1958 attempt on Martin Luther King's life and the 1965 murder of Malcolm X, the threat to Meredith could not be disregarded.

"Handkerchief-Head." The reason for such emotional outbursts is that Powell's fall from power has won him a shaman's hold on Negroes' feelings. At a rally in Powell's church, even the N.A.A.C.P.'s Roy Wilkins was denounced as a "handkerchief-head nigger" for a statement casting doubt on Powell's value to the civil rights movement. (Wilkins said he had been misinterpreted.)

Ironically, Meredith himself sided with those who criticized the House action in barring Powell as racially inspired. However, Meredith reasoned: "A revolution will not succeed if it is based on wrong. For Negroes to re-elect Powell just because he is a Negro, regardless of everything else, would be as wrong as what the Congress did." As for Powell, Meredith said mildly: "The people deserve something more."

"Interesting." Meredith certainly deserved more than the lukewarm reception he got from prominent New York Republicans. Though Meredith said he only agreed to consider the nomination after a personal request from Nelson Rockefeller, the Governor was markedly silent about his candidacy. New York Mayor John Lindsay--who, like Rockefeller, values Negro support--ho-hummed that it was an "interesting" development. The only major party figure in New York to endorse him was Senator Jacob Javits. He called Meredith "a symbol of the dignity and participation in our national life for which the people of Harlem have been working for decades."

As a practical matter, of course, white politicians could do little to win votes for Meredith. In any event, the congressional leadership must now fight Powell in court, not at the ballot box. Last week the House passed a resolution authorizing Speaker John McCormack to retain private counsel to oppose Powell's suit--although Congress does not recognize the judiciary's right to pass on internal legislative affairs. As House Minority Leader Gerald Ford pointed out, the Powell case has already been "pleaded before the only court of competent jurisdiction under the Constitution, the House of Representatives, and judgment has been passed." Now, said Ford, "the integrity of the House must be preserved, protected and defended from without as well as from within."

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