CONGRESS HEARING Powell May Turn Down Seat

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31304, 25 February 1967, Page 13

CONGRESS HEARING Powell May Turn Down Seat

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright?

WASHINGTON, February 24.

The controversial Negro Congressman, Mr Adam Clayton Powell, may refuse to take his seat because of severe disciplinary measures recommended to be taken against him, observers in Washington said today.

They said the flamboyant Harlem representative could not easily face the docking of 40,000 dollars salary, public rebuke in the House and demotion to the most junior ranking.

These measures were recommended yesterday by a Congressional committee which investigated Mr Powell after he was barred from taking his seat amid allegations that he converted public funds to his own use.

His failure to comply with Court orders against him in New York also influenced the decision of his colleagues to strip him of chairmanship of the House Education and Labour Committee.

The chairman, Mr Emanuel Celler, of New York, and his nine-man panel, which included one Negro, said Mr Powell had brought discredit on the House and shown contempt for procedure.

It recommended that the 40,000 dollars he is accused of pocketing be docked from his salary at the rate of 1000 dollars a month.

The main finding against the debonair, Harlem politician was that he pocketed

more than 28,000 dollars paid by Congress as salary to his estranged wife, Yvette, who testified that she stopped working for him two years ago. Private Trips . The Justice Department is to take up this and other alleged misuses of public funds, including the financing of private trips to Mr Powell’s holiday home in the Bahamas. The unprecedented action against Mr Powell was a unanimous decision of the investigating committee, although the Negro member, Mr John Conyers, of Michigan, had been against the pay docking. The Negro community and civil rights leaders in New York today generally looked on recommendations tor a House of Representatives censure and the fining of Mr Powell as racial discrimination. House’s Promise

But there were some top Negro leaders who felt that the Harlem Democrat had made himself vulnerable to some action by his conduct over the years. Mr Roy Wilkins, the execu-

tive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, reminded the House that it had promised “. . . to study the feasibility of setting standards of ethical conduct for all members of that body.”

“Unless it does so and metes out equal justice to all offenders regardless of their race, religion, party, regional or national origin, it will validate the charge that Mr Powell, in spite of his highly irregular conduct, has been singled out personally for special treatment” ‘Many Fronts’ Mr Whitney Young, the national director of the Urban League, said: “Obviously Mr Powell was vulnerable on many fronts” because “you cannot be black and wrong.” “We are still at a situation in America where you can be white and wrong and still get away with it as many white Congressmen do,” Mr Young said. “Or you can be black and right and succeed.” Mr Young said he did not feel they should have denied Mr Powell his seat in the first place and was glad the House voted to return it to Mr Powell.