According to the Bible, Adam was born in the year 3760 BC, and died in the year 2830 BC at the age of 930. Powell was the son of the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York City.Brought up in a middle-class home, he received his B.A. In April 1972, Powell became gravely ill and was flown to a Miami hospital from his home in Bimini. Powell’s life had extreme highs and lows, but he nevertheless left a legacy of historic proportions in the struggle for equal rights. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (1908-1972) was an African American politician, pastor, and civil rights activist. [8] Anthony reared Adam as his son, and he and Sally had several children together. His mother, Mattie Fletcher Powell, and his father, the Rev. There is an obituary in the New York Times, April 5, 1972, which provides additional information. Adam Clayton Powell was born near Martin's Mill on Maggodee Creek,[3] in Franklin County, Virginia. Appropriately, among the monuments bearing his name in Harlem--including what used to be Seventh Avenue--is the tallest structure: the Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., State Office Building. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. would have been 63 years old at the time of death or 106 years old today. During his youth, Powell lived a reckless life filled with gambling. On 30 June 1889, Powell married Mattie Shaffer (née Mattie Buster) of Pratt, West Virginia. The Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, originally the Harlem State Office Building, is a nineteen-story, high-rise office building located at 163 West 125th Street at the corner of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.It is named after Adam Clayton Powell Jr, the first African-American elected to Congress from New York. 1880 US Census, "Anthony Powell" and family, Cabin Creek, Kanawha County, West Virginia. Powell and his family members were classified as mulatto in the censuses until 1920. My first interview was December 1972 with one of his old colleagues, J. Raymond Jones. He joined the Townsend Harris High School and later the City College of New York. He was then staying in Bimini. Photo circa 1923. From 1908 until 1936, Powell served as pastor of the century-old Abyssinian Baptist Church, whose congregation had moved north and was located in Harlem, New York. He headed the family as a farmer. He died there on April 4, 1972, at the age of 63, from acute prostatitis, according to contemporary newspaper accounts. HAMILTON: Adam Clayton Powell died April 4th, 1972, the same day, four years earlier, that King was killed. Note: Documentation of origins was scarce for many slave and free black families. He was the first person of African-American descent to be elected from New York to Congress. https://theblackdetour.com/history-of-adam-clayton-powell-jr Adam Clayton Powell Sr. identified as black in the South and in his life. Viewed by his Harlem constituents as a dedicated crusader for civil rights, Powell earned the loyalty and respect of many African Americans with his confrontational approach to racial discrimination. He was raised in a family of seventeen children. As a young man, Powell became a coalminer. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who represented Harlem in the U.S. Congress from 1945 through 1971, was the first modern African American politician and the first Black Congressman to exercise real power in the halls of Washington, D.C. There is an obituary in the New York Times, April 5, 1972, which provides additional information. 62107932, citing Baptist Hill Cemetery, Brewton, Escambia County, Alabama, USA ; Maintained by … Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. flourished as an activist, organizing rent strikes, mass actions, and civil rights campaigns against businesses and agencies that engaged in anti-black discrimination. After his funeral at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, his son, Adam III, poured his ashes from a plane over the waters of Bimini. [10], J. Daniel Pezzoni, a preservation consultant, noted in 1995 there was a local tradition linking Powell's family to Llewellyn Powell, a white planter, who had property 10 miles away at Hale's Ford, but there was no documentary evidence for this. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. would have been 63 years old at the time of death or 106 years old today. Adam passed away on April 4, 1972 at the age of 63 in Miami, Florida, USA. Anthony, his wife and children took the surname Powell. In the world of wartime American politics, there was never going to be room for a larger than life congressman with an unconventional style. "[9] Mildred was still living with her daughter and family past 1880, so he knew her well. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. death quick facts: Oscar Stanton De Priest of Illinois was the first black person to be elected to Congress in the 20th century; Powell was the fourth. While all of them did help civil rights in their own ways, none of them provided the challenge to Jim Crow like Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Elected in 1944, Powell (1908-1972), a Baptist minister, made his presence known in Congress from the very start when he routinely challenged Southern lawmakers. Union University ) renamed Seventh Avenue in Harlem, New York and condemns all forms of segregation and discrimination the., Florida School ( 1895–1896 ) and earned a D.D first marriage Yale Divinity School ( )... 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