The Powell Case

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31315, 10 March 1967, Page 12

The Powell Case

The special Congressional committee which was asked to determine the validity of the ban against the seating of a Negro Congressman, Adam Clayton Powell, clearly found no joy in its task. The House of Representatives had earlier voted to prevent Mr Powell from taking his seat—he had represented a Harlem constituency for 22 years—pending an inquiry into his alleged misuse of public funds. The committee, after failing to agree at a protracted sitting, finally recommended that Mr Powell retain his seat but that he be censured and deprived of 40,000 dollars salary. He should also lose seniority, including the chairmanship of the important Education and Labour Committee. In spite of the pleadings of the party leaders that the recommendation be acted on, the House voted to declare Mr Powell’s seat vacant and ordered a by-election in Harlem-r now set for April 11. It is improbable that Mr Powell would have submitted to the disciplinary measures proposed, or the humiliation of resuming his seat under censure. He is in fact taking early Federal Court action to test the validity of his expulsion. Those who support him consider the expulsion order to be unconstitutional; others contend that the Constitution clearly gives the House power to judge the qualifications of its members. A keenly-fought legal battle obviously is in prospect. There seems to be little doubt that Mr Powell, a pastor-politician, had invited censure by his conduct He had been accused of appropriating some 28,000 dollars paid by Congress as salary for his estranged wife, who testified that she had not worked for him for two years. He also faced arrest on contempt charges arising out of his defiance of a New York court order requiring the payment of damages to a Harlem widow whom he had been convicted of libelling eight years ago. His one gesture in this matter was the handing over of 33,000 dollars in partial settlement of the much larger sum he had been ordered to pay. Before the committee of inquiry, Mr Powell’s attitude had been defiant rather than apologetic. He refused to tell anything but his age, length of residence in New York, and his address. Then, pending the finding of the committee and the decision of the House, he retired to his holiday house in the Bahamas, leaving his lawyers with a watching brief. As was to' be expected, the cry of racial discrimination was raised immediately when the House ignored the committee’s recommendation and voted for expulsion. The House may, indeed, be making a martyr of Mr Powell when it could have given him a chance to admit culpability, express regret, and resume his seat Almost certainly, he will contest the by-election and be returned with a larger majority than ever. Stalemate, in that event, might continue indefinitely, unless a Federal Court judgment invalidates his expulsion as unconstitutional. The action to be brought by Mr Powell must be of great significance because it has never been decided how far Congress may go in determining the fitness of an elected representative to take his seat Congress has certain powers, but their scope has never been properly defined. The record shows that three members have been expelled, all for treason In the Civil War. There have been other exclusions, less as punishment than to permit investigations.