Adam Clayton Powell

Filmmaker Richard Kilberg's Oscar-nominated 1989 documentary Adam Clayton Powell takes a remarkable look at the life of a crucial and ultimately tragic figure in American 20th-century history. The son of a Harlem preacher, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (1908-1972) was the first black congressman from New York, a flamboyant and inspiring leader who actively pursued rights for African Americans. As the longtime chairman of the House of Representatives' Education and Labor committee, Powell successfully channeled vast numbers of progressive policies through U.S. legislation during the early 1960s. Before that, however, Powell was New York City's de facto leader of the civil rights movement, years prior to the ascension of Martin Luther King Jr. as a national leader. Powell was also a larger-than-life figure who womanized, laughed at tax investigations and congressional inquiries into his personal and official affairs, and ignored signs that his era of black leadership was on the wane as King and others became prominent activists. Narrated by Julian Bond, this engrossing portrait—which interweaves archival footage with interview excerpts—tells the story of a great man whose charming defiance and wobbly ethics was shaped (as one commentator puts it) by a lifetime of deflecting racism from the Roaring Twenties through the emergence of the Great Society before he ultimately wound up in self-imposed exile on the island of Bimini in the Bahamas. DVD extras include an interview with the director. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (T. Keogh)