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| Trail
Point 12: Isabell & Adam Clayton Powell Cottage - "Keep
the faith, baby!" |
Powell
Cottage |
#The Powell Cottage, known as
"The Bunny Cottage", was owned by Adam Clayton Powell,
the first African American congressman from the east coast since
Reconstruction, and also a Reverend at the Abyssinian Baptist Church
in Harlem. He was a highly influential leader of the Democratic
majority during the passage of the civil rights legislation of the
1960's and 1970's. This home was left to his wife, Isabel W. Powell,
following their divorce in 1945.
(The following
article is reprinted from The Vineyard Gazette)
The History Project will dedicate the seventeenth site of the Trail
on August 24th when a plaque will be unveiled at the Powell house
on Dorothy West Avenue in the historic Highlands area of Oak Bluffs.
The plaque is to honor the lives of Isabel Washington Powell
and the late Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
Ms. Powell was a dancer during the 1920’s at the famed Cotton Club
in Harlem and when she met the famous and fascinating future Congressman,
she was starring in a broadway play: “Harlem.” Following her marriage,
she gave up her show career, and became a supportive wife to Clayton
Powell, Jr., who was then a charismatic junior minister at the Abyssinian
Baptist Church in Harlem. Actively involved in the Harlem Renaissance,
Ms. Powell was described by her husband in his autobiography as
“the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.” Their marriage in 1933,
held at the Abyssinian church, attracted a crowd of thousands who
hoped to shake hands with the golden couple.
Isabell & Adam |
In 1937, they bought the house in Oak Bluffs known to them as the
“Bunny Cottage,” and lived there together until 1945 when they divorced.
Isabel Powell continued to spend all of her summers on the Vineyard
in the “Bunny Cottage” where she and Adam had entertained the ambitious
and gifted of their generation. Matthew Henson,
the African American explorer who succeeded in reaching the North
Pole in 1909, was a guest in this house. Ms. Powell began a teaching
career as a special education teacher in the New York public schools
in the years after World War II, and served as a much loved and
honored teacher for over thirty years. Though now of advanced years,
Ms. Powell still entertains and serves her chosen guests with amazing
“bloody marys” for which she is justly famous. Dorothy Taylor
recalls Isabel Powell as a very beautiful woman who “always looked
very dramatic. She wore wide, swirly skirts and sandals. She was
spectacular.”
"Unless man is committed to the belief
that all mankind are his brothers, then he labors in vain
and hypocritically in the vineyards of equality."
- Adam Clayton Powell Jr., 'Black Power: A Form of Godly
Power' 1967 |
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.’s career as a Congressman for the Harlem
district of New York began in 1945 though his career as an advocate
for racial justice had begun years before when he preached at the
Abyssinian Baptist church,
Adam
Clayton Powell and Dr. Martin Luther King |
and became involved with protesting issues of class and racial inequities.
Lincoln Pope III, remembers that in the 1960’s
many young African Americans felt that there was no point in people
of color trying to join the political institutions. He told the
Congressman that a revolution was necessary. Clayton Powell’s response
was to dismiss that notion: “you can burn down the buildings and
refuse to join the institutions, but they will just build new ones
and you will be left outside powerless. Join... and make changes
from the inside.” Making changes from the inside seems to have been
a successful strategy for Mr. Powell. He was responsible for the
“Powell amendment” that forbids any racial discrimination in any
federally funded project. This piece of legislation was probably
the most effective weapon against segregation and unequal opportunity
within the workplace. During the years of the Kennedy and Johnson
administration, Clayton Powell, as Chairman of the Education and
Labor Committee was responsible for the passing of an impressive
series of civil rights laws that helped to shape the world in which
we live today.
Though Congressman Powell was a very effective politician and campaigner
for civil rights, his political career was shadowed by controversy.
At the time of his death in 1972, he had successfully challenged
his dismissal from Congress. Throughout his life, he continued to
be the pastor at the Abyssinian Baptist Church where his charismatic
preaching interspersed with civil rights advocacy attracted congregations
of thousands. The late Elizabeth White reflecting
on his life noted that “Adam looked white, but he always thought
black.”
Harlem 1967 |
Adam Clayton Powell’s charismatic personality is remembered by Heather
Rynd who recalls his teaching her some prayers when she
was five or six years old. Congressman Clayton Powell was a friend
of her mother, Valerie Lethridge Rynd, and he is
recalled as a very handsome man with great charm who took an interest
in everyone.
Congressman Clayton Powell loved the Vineyard and was an avid fisherman.
The fishing poles that he used are still on display in the cottage
that he shared with Isabel. Toward the end of his career, the Congressman
was fond of reciting his legislative record and always ended with
the observation “I love America.” The sense of possibility that
exists in the U. S. fascinated him and motivated him to struggle
for change and justice throughout his life. To all those he loved
and esteemed, Adam Clayton Powell said: “Keep the Faith,
baby.” It is that faith in the possibility of successfully
struggling for justice that the Heritage Trail History Project honors
as a very significant site on the Trail. |
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