Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr. (1908–72), U.S. politician. Minister of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, he was New York's first black city council member (1941). He founded The People's Voice (1942) and, as the flamboyant “Voice of Harlem,” was a Democratic representative (1945–70). Excluded from Congress for alleged misuse of public funds (1967), the expulsion was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court and he was reelected twice until he was defeated in 1970.