Harlem’s Own : ADAM CLAYTON POWELL, JR.: The Political Biography of an American Dilemma, <i> By Charles V. Hamilton (Atheneum: $24.95; 448 pp.)</i>

The death of Adam Clayton Powell Jr., on April 4, 1972, removed from the American scene one of its most colorful and controversial characters. For more than three decades, Powell had been on center stage--as pastor of New York’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, one of the nation’s largest, and as a leading actor in civic and political affairs in New York City. For 28 years he had been a member of the United States House of Representatives and had wielded more power than any other African-American who had ever had a seat there. Despite the taunts and barbs that he inflicted on his white colleagues, accusing them of blatant racist policies, he rose through the ranks to chair the important Committee on Education and Labor.

Powell’s fall was as dramatic as his rise. He was plagued by difficulties with the Internal Revenue Service, by a New Yorker who sued him for libel and slander for calling her a “bag woman,” and by his colleagues, who accused him, among other things, of mismanaging the funds of his committee. His income-tax problems doubtless affected the manner in which he dealt with the White House, as he was more willing to do a favor for the President than he would otherwise have been, in order to seek intervention in his tax difficulties.

He was hounded for years by the libel charge, and in the end he lost face as well as the suit. His colleagues expelled him from the House, but the United States Supreme Court declared the action unconstitutional. Although he was elected for another term and was forced to take his seat as a freshman member, he was absent much of the time and was defeated in the next election by Charles B. Rangel, the present incumbent.

Charles V. Hamilton, the Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government at Columbia University and author of numerous works on political science and the black experience, has provided a robust, realistic portrait of Harlem’s first African-American Congressman. Powell was handsome, self-indulgent, given to excesses where women, travel and good living were concerned, and had what came to be known as “The Powell Problem”: He was too public, too flamboyant, too reckless. More than once he taunted reporters and delighted admiring black audiences by saying: “If it’s not illegal, immoral or fattening, I’ll do it.”

But he did not always adhere to this tenet. There was another Powell problem, one of personal integrity. Up to a point he would work with others on, say, civil rights or community matters. Then, without giving notice, he would publicize their plans as if they originated with him.

In 1944, he infuriated Walter White of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People by going public with plans on which White and others had worked for months. “Powell’s Church Wars on Hoodlums,” the New York Times reported, while Powell’s own column, “The Soap Box,” in the Harlem newspaper the People’s Voice, credited the NAACP for calling the planning meeting, but added that by that time it was too late.

The Powell problem also could appear in his misstating what transpired in meetings such as the one he had with President Eisenhower in October, 1956. He claimed the President had made statements to him which, Hamilton says, was “clearly not the case.” In June, 1963, when President Kennedy made an important speech on civil rights, Powell claimed that he stayed up half the night helping the Administration draft the historic speech. Confronted by a Kennedy aide who asked him to clarify the statement, he denied having made it. When the aide pointed out that Powell’s statement had been taped by newsmen, Powell replied confidently, “Well, you know those tape recorders. They have all those knobs that you turn on and off. They put other things in other places. That’s what happened.”

Some have argued that Powell’s faults pale before his commitment to strengthening the position of African Americans in American society. He made enormous efforts to attach to proposed legislation the “Powell Amendment,” which would deny federal aid to schools, hospitals, housing, and other facilities if they maintained racial segregation or discrimination.

Even here, though, he was not always attentive. He was absent when the House voted on the all-important civil-rights bill in 1956. He could hardly have been the civil-rights watchdog he claimed to be if his voting record on roll calls was 54% when the average for Democratic members was 88%. Although Powell was not active in the day-to-day struggles to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, the establishment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Community Relations Service was, in a real sense, an updated version of the “Powell Amendment.”

Hamilton sees Powell’s career as epitomizing the American dilemma about which the Swedish scholar Gunnar Myrdal wrote in 1944, the year Powell was elected to Congress. As Myrdal described it, there was a gap between what white Americans professed and how they acted with regard to the place of African Americans in American society; at the same time, white Americans responded slowly, even indifferently, to any effort to close that gap. In other words, Hamilton argues, by championing civil-rights causes, and by attempting to close that gap, Adam Clayton Powell was reflecting “the clear desires of large numbers of people, especially, but by no means exclusively, his black constituents.”

This was the fuel that fired Powell’s leadership, and Hamilton argues that while his personal eccentricities made it difficult for some to respond to his appeal, this made it all the more meaningful. Friend and foe alike, Hamilton declares, “had to jump through many . . . hoops to get at the essence--the dilemma--of the race issue that Powell was raising.”

The tragedy of Powell’s career is that he saw as clearly as anyone the hypocrisy and moral deceit of the country on racial matters. While rejecting the notion of a double standard, one for whites and one for blacks, he viewed himself as above the rules that deplored such deceit and hypocrisy. On one occasion he said, “I do not do more than any other member of Congress, and by the grace of God, I’ll not do less.” In this arresting biography, Hamilton has captured both the glorious triumphs and the tragic defeats of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. While he did not solve the American dilemma, Powell’s life and work helped give the quest for its solution a new passion, perhaps even a new optimism. The dilemma, however, survived Powell and would provide challenges and frustrations for succeeding generations.