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OK. And let's let's start with just your memories of this period before around the time of Brown. What's hard today for us to realize that within a very short period time within the lifetimes of many residents of Washington D.C. that Washington D.C. including Capitol Hill was legally segregated. My father was the second black congressman elected after Reconstruction arrives in Washington when I was very small. And discovers that he and my mother are not allowed to stay in the congressional hotel. That's what was called the Congressional otel across the street from the House of Representatives. He was told he could not eat in the congressional dining room in the U.S. Capitol and he ignored that and ate there anyway. But Washington D.C. was a segregated city and it was the nation's
capital. This played itself out in many ways but one way was globally something else we don't remember now that very clearly is the United States and what was then the Soviet Union. Was Locked were locked in a global competition which played itself militarily played itself out in propaganda and throughout the world and especially in Africa and Asia and Latin America. The Soviet Union could point to segregation in the United States and say well the U.S. says it's for democracy. But look how they treat their own citizens. So when Brown versus Board of Education is decided and some people didn't realize how sweeping the decision was at the time. Some did. But this is not just a story that's
for the legal community. This is not just a story in the Supreme Court. It's a story on the streets of Washington D.C. and it's a story on the streets of cities throughout Africa and Asia. I am indebted to Wil Haygood of The Washington Post who found an article in which my father wrote for Reader's Digest. Immediately after the Brown decision in which the headline was democracy's shining hour communism's worst defeat. That's not the way we would frame it now but at the time this was a major global victory. And if you think that's overstated you can just look at the front pages of the newspapers in the weeks and months after Brown and see the international repercussions. There was a huge conference that was being held in Indonesia then down at the Bandung Conference. Which was co-hosted by Indonesia India. Many of the other
major powers that were not aligned that is a have are not formally allied either with the United States or with the Soviet Union. And the beginning of that conference was a propaganda victory for. For the various communist powers including China which at the time was certainly communist It was part of the nonaligned bloc. Joe and why one of the Chinese leaders was there in person. And there was a great deal of criticism of the United States. About halfway through the conference the tide turned. My father appeared United States was not formally represented. And my father wanted to go. President Eisenhower told him not to go. My father again ignored his advice and actually went with press credentials. Among other things my father had been a journalist and the owner and publisher and editor of a newspaper in New York. He went with press credentials and filed stories for black on
newspapers. When he arrived he held a news conference and there are these photographs that you can see of the correspondence from Tass of the Russian news services pressing around him with their notebooks open. And at one point in the newsreel footage that's also mentioned in a article by Howard bigger in the New York Times. The reporters from Tass and Prague to fold up their notebooks and start to back away because the message they expected was that America has this problem with democracy because it's not treating them called the negroes the negroes very well. And instead my father can point to Brown versus Board of Education and say yes the United States has problems. Yes it's not a perfect society. But with this Supreme Court decision this helps us move in the right direction. Not exactly the message they were expecting. And according to The New York
Times the conference then changed and was no longer this international propaganda victory that everyone expected for the Soviet Union to do. Your father was in sort of a unique position in Indonesia arguing for United States democracy. Yes he was at the time one of the best known and probably the most vocal voice in the United States speaking out about injustices that black people were suffering and would continue to suffer for years. And so when he arrived in Indonesia the expectation was that he would continue to live as he as he had throughout his life to articulate the plight of
African-Americans. What he did was without minimizing that to say that the United States. Unlike some other countries and I don't know whether he specifically had explicitly referred to the Soviet Union but certainly referred to some Soviet Bloc nations. I was making progress on Brown vs. Board of Education epitomized the progress that the highest court in the United States. Had in effect made a sweeping change in the school system of the entire country. North and South. Something which certainly went against the propaganda propaganda which of course had its basis in fact about racism in the United States. But it was an unusual role for him and one which. I don't recall my memories
really misty on this but I don't recall he expected this when he left the United States and took the leave then a very very long journey to Indonesia to attend the conference. So it was it was he actually heard the news in Indonesia were on the way to No. It happened before he left but he he certainly used it he pointed to it. He pointed to the Brown decision because it was so important because it was both symbolically important but also it was going to have tremendous tremendous impact nationwide in schools. This came after. Six years five years of his pressing in Congress for what became known as the Powell amendment which was a very short attachment that he would propose to legislation
which was stated simply that federal dollars could not be spent in schools or any other federal or any other facility government facility that separate was segregated. That would be the exact term I believe was upheld on a state of the federal funds could not be used in any facility that discriminated believe that was the exact term. That amendment had hadn't gotten anywhere and it would be another 10 years before it became law. But his keeping up the pressure on the purse strings. As federal dollars became more and more important in school systems around the country had established him as a very vocal and very prominent opponent of segregated schools as well as segregated facilities of all kinds.
Suddenly the brown opinion. It was published by the Supreme Court. What happens he introduces the Powell Amendment again saying Well now there can be no more separate schools. And it was defeated because Congress wasn't ready to embrace the full implications of Brown decision. Did his his own life in Washington as a congressman change at all in the months following. I don't know about months but already in the years following the Brown decision other things began to happen public accommodations laws. That had upheld segregation formality of segregation. Those began to crumble. By By the end of the decade you had the first of the civil rights legislation that was passed which affected all of the United States including
the District of Columbia so that no longer did you have to have separate facilities separate hotels separate restaurants separate restrooms as you traveled around the country. Now again it's one thing for a law to be passed in Washington or for a court decision to take place in the Supreme Court and another for it to be carried out in cities and towns and villages throughout the United States. But at least the law had started to change. And and his life started change. I've heard from a number of people here on this campus at Howard University and at Florida A&M and other historically black colleges universities stories of my father sometimes had to leave. When he visited campuses in the south he had to leave by going out a window because the police were coming in the front door to come in and arrest him. And this happened in Tallahassee the state capital of Florida. And yet the police were coming in the front door to arrest a member of Congress an elected member of the United States Congress.
And he escaped out a window and that was not it was not unique for what was disturbing this nearly. All. Of the big phrase that was used over and over again that I'd read about in the papers growing up was that he was an outside agitator. He was coming in to stir things up and he was disturbing the peace with them which he certainly was. And probably was very proud of. Absolutely. You were very young when the Brown decision came down. But did it when you as a second grader Do you remember anything do you remember that decision at all that that day or that week. I remember it being a headline in the newspaper and I remember it wasn't that Dave it was a few days later talking about it at the dinner table. My parents often talked about things that happened in Washington or elsewhere in the world at dinner
and they the entire discussion was that this is going to be a major major event. There was still when you go back to April of 1054 there was still discussion that well maybe this wasn't going to be the end and it wasn't the end. There was resistance. North and South. Again going forward 10 years to the 1960s when I was in school in college in Boston and you had. Well-organized vociferous and violent resistance to school desegregation. In New England. And so it did. Brown was the beginning but it certainly was by no means the end. Your father mentioned the dinner table conversation. I'm sure that
as you were growing up you ran into quite a few folks civil rights movement journalists and folks that were covering and cared about these issues. Were there any stories that were told that you can tell. That were past you know sort of the legends of brown. Things that folks may not have been let me try to think of who was there on Sundays. My father would preach two or three sermons. I was in your Baptist Church. And after church I would be in the office in his office in the church and sometimes we'd go across the street. And if there was a televised sport that was going on it was probably going to be on the television set which of course in those days was black and white just the horizontal and the vertical. But you could at least hold
the image long enough to get a play from the then relatively new and I fell. Or from baseball and the New York had three teams of three baseball teams that the Yankees the Giants and the Dodgers. There was a spirited discussion of which game to watch on a Sunday afternoon. Jackie but yes I doubt that often end of the discussion. But. There was one Sunday afternoon which would have been shortly after Brown. It. May not have been the Sunday after Brown but there was a collection of people who were over. Over at the apartment that my grandparents had there we often gathered after church. For supper and I were watching a baseball game and
the crowd was cheering whether it was Jackie Robinson or Willie Mays one of the then new African-American baseball players playing in the majors for the first time and my father turned and he said that's how we're really going to make progress. We have crowds of white people in the south cheering black ballplayers black quarterbacks black running backs to the middle to really start to come out of the barrel start to come down. Because everyone then. As I recall discussing how do you translate what is now the law of the land into the classrooms of America. And I don't think anybody underestimated what that was going to take. Well you are in some senses the first generation to come of age in the post Brown you're in. You were in school when the decision and you went to college after the decision.
In your own personal life do you think that made the difference. Oh oh yes in my. Bill I went to college in 1963 and I was one of I think four. Black students at MIT and a class of six or seven hundred. And I think there are also only four or five women in that class. That has changed completely. But even having four in the class was different from a few years just a few years earlier. There may have been one or two in previous years. So we were just the very beginnings of the change. And it was. That would have been. 10 years after that decision. So you were only beginning to see the changes. And now when I go back. To see
you know when my sons are in school a few years ago or to visit college campuses now in high schools now. The change is striking. Now we always know that there is some progress yet to be made. But the change in 50 years is something which. Most people 50 years ago probably would have found difficult to believe it could happen. In a generation or two generations. What. What's the civics. Think about what changes that you can visually see. Oh just just I think when you walk into classrooms that previously were segregated whether by law or by custom and see. Who was there. As you know I spent a lot of time on the West Coast now and the state of California in the University of California university system is facing
the the very cutting edge issues of affirmative action and representation and how you continue to address inclusiveness and higher education. You go to the Berkeley campus. Where are the numbers of African-American and Hispanic students have declined in the last two years. There are still a lot of black and brown faces. Far more than there were. 20 years ago 30 years ago. Certainly more than 50 years ago. It is easy to lose sight. As we look at the challenges of trying to progress further. It's easy to lose sight of how much has happened in 50 years. But just look at some of those old photographs. And you see a sea of faces. That today.
You see Berkeley today is minority white and you see in the year when the photographs of Berkeley in the 50s almost all the students are white. So that's that's quite a change. Now some people might argue that well it's work. We don't need it. But permit of action which is one of the consequences of the University of Michigan decision is just I mean well not decision but the case is up for a decision. Some people are arguing that now it's time to move in a different direction that what you've just described is perhaps evidence. We don't need to worry about these issues. Well we wouldn't need to. Some people in light of recent court decisions do say that especially in light of recent court decisions do say that there's no need to continue to push for progress on this front.
You do have to wonder though. As we see in the first few years after the rollback of affirmative action. That the percentage of African-American and Hispanic students in some universities notably the University of California at Berkeley and UCLA in Los Angeles that those numbers have started to go down. This is just the first year or two what if we look out another 25 or 50 years. We can't. As a nation as a matter of policy as a matter of equity. Have those numbers go down. And still be able to hold our heads up and say this is America. It's not just a local story in California or Washington D.C. or even in the United States. It's a global story of how. The U.S. is
going to be perceived around the world. This was a huge disadvantage to the United States before Brown 50 years ago when critics around the world could point to the way the United States was treating a particularly black citizens. And it will once again be a source of growing global criticism. Of the United States. If this country starts to slide backward toward what may longer be de jury. By law but it could well be by practice a return to a more segregated educational system. Well there are still some desegregation of a kind in the United States. Oh absolutely. There's segregation of Bye Bye housing patterns or segregation by income levels or second segregation of different times. There is the
self segregation. Many many African American college students who are on campuses. Harvard Berkeley Stanford. Who don't feel very comfortable around many of their fellow students and so they have formed. Many are standing. Black Student Associations separate living facilities. That speaks to something that speaks to something that we need to address. Separating in two different living groups or different societies or dormitories. That's a temporary solution. That's a that's that's addressing just part of it. And what they're reacting to what black students around the country are reacting to is in some ways the unfinished business of brown which is the unfinished
business of America. We think back 100 years ago if you Dubois saying that the central issue of America is race and here we are 100 years after he wrote those words of 50 years after Brown. And in many ways it still is the central issue of America that we have not fully engaged and certainly are nowhere near solving. King used to say you can change the laws you can change the hearts. What you're talking about is takes a lot longer to change the hearts of some people and some hearts are changing. It's not enough. One last thing and I thought well this is a question. When you robbed the bank last week. OK. I mean when you go on for a long time.
But but one of the other things about your career I mean you've been a journalist you've covered the world as well as having to become a journalist within a newsroom that has as you know not always been very positive towards or welcoming to African-Americans as well as other minorities as well as women and so on. So what about the about how the media has responded. What you saw as a journalist as you broke in and and. And till now did you experience the same kind of evolution. Oh oh yes. You could almost divide the media coverage of race in the United States into three phases. There's one phase which maybe comes up to the early 50s.
Where coverage of race was coverage of them. Because again if you look at the early 1950s there were no African-Americans in the newsroom of The New York Times. I think the first hire they made was 56 57 somewhere in there. And so it was it was coverage fairly explicitly from a white viewpoint looking at people over there. The second. Phase one could argue. This when particularly television became caught up in in the civil rights revolution and people could see on television every night. What was then film footage of how black people were treated by the police by those in authority. As well as
just informally. And suddenly there it was in your living room every night 80 90 percent of the United States watching this night after night that changed a lot of attitudes including in newsrooms. But then there was this third phase that's almost a post-civil rights phase as managers of news organizations large and small. I realized that the story as a stop at their front door that they themselves in their own newsrooms need to be more inclusive just as their news coverage and many of their editorials were urging the government and their fellow citizens to be suddenly they had to become more inclusive and tolerant in their own newsrooms. That's more difficult because now you're bringing it home now you're bringing it to the very next best. Now you're bringing it to you. Who are you going to have. Literally rubbing elbows and that
becomes something which is much more difficult particularly as those early black news reporters and writers begin to rise through the newsroom structure through the organization. Are you going to have someone as editor of someone as your boss. These are difficult questions that we get and that you know we're get them that I know work you have to. Yes that's right. Ran short of time. But yeah.
Series
At Howard
Episode
Brown v. Board
Raw Footage
Interview with Adam Clayton Powell
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WHUT (Washington, District of Columbia)
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cpb-aacip/293-mc8rb6wf5m
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Adam Clayton Powell discusses segregation prior to and the national and global aftermath of the Brown v. Board decision. He also recalls momentous events of race relations in which his father was involved.
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Interview
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00:29:12
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WHUT-TV (Howard University Television)
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Duration: 0:29:00
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Duration: 0:29:00
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Citations
Chicago: “At Howard; Brown v. Board; Interview with Adam Clayton Powell,” WHUT, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-293-mc8rb6wf5m.
MLA: “At Howard; Brown v. Board; Interview with Adam Clayton Powell.” WHUT, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-293-mc8rb6wf5m>.
APA: At Howard; Brown v. Board; Interview with Adam Clayton Powell. Boston, MA: WHUT, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-293-mc8rb6wf5m