Councilman Herbert Loring Jackson’s friend and neighbor, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., was born just after him on Nov. 29, 1908 and lived until April 4, 1972. Mr. Powell was one of the more famous and colorful of Oak Bluffs’ history-making black elected officials.
Some 250 people gathered Sunday on a glorious late-summer day to honor Ms. Isabel Powell, the matriarch of the Powell family, and the memory of Cong. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. A diverse crowd gathered to pay their respects to Ms. Powell and to take part in the making of history as the Heritage Trail dedicated its 17th site.
We were always stared at. Whenever we went outside the neighborhood that knew us, we were inspected like specimens under glass. My mother prepared us. As she marched us down our front stairs, she would say what our smiles were on tiptoe to hear, “Come on, children, let’s go out and drive the white folks crazy.”
Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York city, and a summer resident of Oak Bluffs, won both the Republican and Democratic nominations for congressman in the 22nd district in New York on Tuesday. He is apparently assured of election as the first Negro representative from New York.
