New York: The Loner & the Shaman

The most significant question still to be settled in the Adam Clayton Powell case is whether the House of Representatives had the constitutional right to deny him admission for the specific offenses with which he was charged. While his lawyers raised this issue in federal court last week, Powell himself unexpectedly became the target of a political challenge in his Harlem fiefdom.

Powell's exclusion from Congress automatically created a vacancy in the 18th District; to fill it, a special election was set for April 11. Powell was assured of the Democratic nomination for the seat he has already won twelve times—even though, as seemed likely, the House might continue to deny it to him. Then James Meredith, 33, the moody loner of the civil rights movement who is now a Columbia law student, announced that he would accept Manhattan Republican Chairman Vincent Albano's invitation to oppose Powell.

"Tetched." In 1962, Meredith risked his life in the battle to integrate the University of Mississippi. Last year, while taking a "march against fear" through his home state, he had shotgun pellets fired into him by a white racist. But from far-off Bimini, Powell, whose zestful pursuit of the sporting life has betrayed the Negroes' trust in him for years, branded Meredith as the "white man's candidate."

Still prevented from visiting New York by contempt-of-court citations that could jail him, Powell said that he would not have to campaign anyway. Nevertheless, reinforced by the presence of CORE'S Floyd McKissick, he got in a few licks for the benefit of reporters and TV cameras. "Long before Mr. Meredith was having his diapers changed," he mocked, "I was walking the streets of Harlem on picket lines." Noting that Meredith describes himself as an "independent Democrat," Powell observed that "anybody who is a Democrat running on the Republican ticket has got to be a little tetched in the head." No one was nasty enough to remind Powell that in 1956 he bolted his party to support Dwight Eisenhower.

If Powell's arrogant comments were predictable, Negro reaction back home to Meredith's bid was irrationally hostile. It was as if the uncontested elections of the old Solid South—the kind that kept the Negro down for so long—had become Harlem's ideal of democracy. Negro Author (Manchild in the Promised Land) Claude Brown, an old friend of Meredith, called him "an ass, an absolute ass." Said Jackie Robinson, a Republican and a civil rights moderate: "No self-respecting Negro should have involved himself in this thing." The Amsterdam News, the Negro weekly, bannered: NEGRO REPUBLICANS OUTRAGED. In Harlem there was open talk of assassination—and in view of the 1958 attempt on Martin Luther King's life and the 1965 murder of Malcolm X, the threat to Meredith could not be disregarded.

"Handkerchief-Head." The reason for such emotional outbursts is that Powell's fall from power has won him a shaman's hold on Negroes' feelings. At a rally in Powell's church, even the N.A.A.C.P.'s Roy Wilkins was denounced as a "handkerchief-head nigger" for a statement casting doubt on Powell's value to the civil rights movement. (Wilkins said he had been misinterpreted.)