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Adam Clayton Powell Junior: The Political Biography of an American Dilemma
Adam Clayton Powell Junior The Political Biography of an American Dilemma Author:Charles V. Hamilton This fascinating, authoritative biography traces the extraordinary rise and precipitous fall of Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the eccentric and enigmatic congressman from Harlem. Powell's tumultuous public career spanned four decades, beginning in the 1930s when he served as the senior pastor of the influential Abyssinian Baptist Church and as a New ... more »York City councilman. As a U.S. representative from New York from 1945 to 1967 and from 1969 to 1971, Powell had an incalculable impact on the legislation of the Great Society and was a passionate and outspoken advocate of civil rights. Complicating this portrait of the masterful politician are the author's revealing insights into Powell's contradictory character--his self-indulgence, his arrogance, and his unreliability. Drawing on extensive interviews and 6,600 pages of FBI materials obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Charles V. Hamilton has fashioned a telling and absorbing book about a singular man and his turbulent era.« less