Wil Haygood

It was Congress that rescued Graham Barden, born in 1896, from a town called New Bern, North Carolina. He would become a seaman, then a football coach, gleefully running up lopsided scores against opponents. By 1920 he had a law degree from the University of North Carolina. A winning football coach, in a small town, with a law degree, could surely achieve more than just Friday evening glory on a football field. So the football coach turned lawyer ran for county judge. He won. He tired of that job and ran for a seat in the state legislature, winning there, too. By 1935, the hometown walls had become too easy to scale. Graham Barden ran for Congress from North Carolina’s Ninth District. It seemed another routine victory. Barden would go to Washington as a Dixiecrat, a Democrat who was conservative and would align himself with conservative Republicans. Like so many other southerners, Barden was destined to hang on in Congress, for years, until his seniority grew, until he himself had a chairmanship. A northerner might

Editors Note: APF Reporter Vol.11 #3 exsisted only as a photo copy, becuase of this the pictures in this story are of poor quality. They were not reckless with merriment, nor did they much tolerate those who were. Members, of the Eisenhower administration were much like Eisenhower himself, businesslike, plain, steady. No need to look before they jumped because they rarely jumped. Congressman Adam Clayton Powell was everything they were not; he lived to shock. One afternoon Powell called the White House and got Sherman Adams on the line. Powell told Adams he was convening an important meeting in Harlem the following Saturday and the White House must send someone. Adams turned to Fred Morrow, a special assistant to Eisenhower. Fred Morrow was a graduate of Bowdoin College. He had worked for years at CBS before joining the administration. With his blue-blood credentials, he became the first black professional to work on the White House staff. He was a serious man in a serious administration. Adams sent Morrow to Harlem to meet with Powell. Morrow

On May 10, 1931, the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, as usual, was packed. There was a buzz in the crowd. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., the pastor, was ill. His son, Adam, Jr., would deliver the sermon. The pulpit hardly frightened Adam Junior. He was raised in this church. The women in the audience had known him since he was an infant, saw him take his first step, stocked his room with beautifully-wrapped gifts on special occasions: he was theirs. But some of the older deacons were wary of young Powell. To them he was a bad boy, a whistler in the dark. He had been kicked out of college for spending too much time with girls, had even boasted of it. Even now he was dating a showgirl. Some Sundays he skipped church to go rowing. The poet, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, was in the audience that Sunday. After the sermon she rushed a note about the young Powell to a friend. “The boy is handsome, graceful and has marvelous personality and control of the massive