9781422277751

a room with two or three older women, but he knew Al by name and said he had listened to the radio broadcast (of Sharpton preaching) when he was in town. Powell asked him to go for a drink, and Sharpton was forced to remind him, “I’m 10, I don’t drink.” His newmentor said he would buy him a soda instead. At the bar, Powell got a scotch and held court. Sharpton wrote: It was the most incredible exhibition of power that I’ve ever seen, with people from every walk of life, including the top business and show and sports people that you’d see in the Amsterdam News and on TV, coming up ADAM CLAYTON POWELL JR. Even as a youngman, AdamClayton Powell Jr. was interested in civil rights. In Harlemduring the 1940s, after training to become a preacher, he began organizing boycotts against utility companies and other white-owned businesses that practiced racial discrimination. Powell was born on November 29, 1908, in New Haven, Connecticut. As a young boy, hemovedwith his family to New York City, where his father begandeveloping the AbyssinianBaptist Church. He graduated fromColgate University and then received his Master of Arts in religious education from Columbia University. When the Depression ravaged Harlem and the rest of the United States, Powell worked at his father’s church, but his focus quickly shifted to the civil rights movement. Determined to correct the discrimination and poverty crippling the black community, Powell organized rent strikes and boycotts of restaurants, stores, bus lines, telephone companies, and even HarlemHospital, urging

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C I V I L R I GH T S L E A D E R S : A L S H A R P TON