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Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr.
3 articles on Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr.
Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century
(b. 29 November 1908; d. 4 April 1972), politician, minister, activist, and writer. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1908. Powell's father, Adam Clayton Powell Sr. (1865–1953), was the minister of the famous Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York. In his autobiography Adam by Adam (1971), Powell states that his paternal grandmother, Sally, was part Cherokee and part black and that she bore a son by a white slaveholder of German descent. A former slave named Dunn took them in and raised Adam Clayton Powell Sr.Powell Sr. was actively involved in the struggle against racism; he was a proponent of racial pride built on a foundation of education and hard work; and he believed that the church should be a pillar of the community—beliefs that he passed on to his son. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. ...
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Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 1098 Includes: Bibliography1908–1972
American congressman and minister, one of the most vocal and flamboyant black campaigners for civil rights. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and grew up in Harlem, New York, where his father was the minister of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, one of the largest congregations in the nation. After a poor academic performance at the City College of New York, Powell attended Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. Light-skinned enough to pass as white, he did so. Upon learning that Powell was black, both the white students among whom Powell had tried to live and the black students whose ethnicity he had rejected were angered.After graduation, Powell helped in his father's church and briefly attended Union Theological Seminary. He went on to earn a master's degree in religious education from Columbia ...
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Source: African American National Biography
Word Count: 2028 Includes: Further Reading | Obituaries:(29 Nov. 1908–4 Apr. 1972), minister and congressman, was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr. and Mattie Fletcher Shaffer. The family moved to New York City in 1909 after the senior Powell became minister of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, then located at Fortieth Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues. In 1923, at the elder Powell's urging, the church and the family joined the surge of black migration uptown to Harlem, with the church moving to 138th Street between Seventh and Lenox avenues.Adam Powell Jr. earned an AB at Colgate University in 1930 and an AM in Religious Education at Columbia University in 1932. So light-skinned that he could pass for white, and did so for a time at Colgate, he came to identify himself as black, and, although from ...
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