November 29 will be the 100th anniversary of the birth of the black preacher known as "Mr. Civil Rights".  No, I'm not talking about Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., although this man was named after his preacher father. 

Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr, was conducting civil rights demonstrations when Dr. King was still a child in the 30's.   As assistant pastor at his father's Abyssinian Baptist Church he was in charge of providing food and clothing to those who couldn't afford them, on one  occasion he even gave  the shoes he was wearing  to a man who couldn't find his size in the used clothing.  

When  he succeeded his father  in 1935 it was the largest Protestant  congregation in  America.  The  church itself  began as a protest against  the segregated seating at New York City's  First Baptist Church in 1808. A century later the church would call  Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.,  to be its pastor.

Rev.  Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., recognized that providing food and clothing wasn't the best way to help people, so he began an effort to get jobs for blacks.  His  Coordinating Committee for Employment used mass protests such as his "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" campaign to persuade various  businesses, including Harlem Hospital, to hire  more blacks.   In 1941 he used a bus boycott to force the hiring of 200 more blacks by the transit authority.    In 1941 he integrated the New York City City Council when he was elected as its first black member. 

In 1944, he became the first northern black from a state other than Illinois to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.  Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., informed Congress:  "I'm the first bad Negro they've had in Congress." The other black Representative,  William Dawson of Chicago, had avoided challenging the status quo.

Powell promptly integrated the House dining room and barber shop.  He persuaded other members of Congress to stop using the n- word on the floor of Congress.  He pushed for an end to segregation in the military and the District of Columbia and invented the "Powell Amendment" which, if successfully attached to legislation, prohibited racial discrimination in the use of federal funds.  Many years later  a similar provision later was adopted to require equal treatment for women.

Later he played a major role in getting President John Kennedy's New Frontier and President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legislation passed.

Unfortunately, late in his career he succumbed to the temptations to misuse power and was eventually expelled from Congress for corrupt activities.  Charles Rangel subsequently replaced him.     Powell died on  April 4, 1972. 

The  focus on Dr. Martin Luther King's contributions has obscured the fact that King didn't start the fight to end segregation, he merely carried that fight to the south where the resistance was greatest.  Rep. Adam Clayton Powell  didn't start the fight either, but he  escalated it.   As a preacher he demonstrated that public protests and boycotts could change the situation.   As a member of Congress he  began the difficult process of changing  government racial policies.  Perhaps the military would have been integrated without his efforts, but his support certainly helped.    He forced Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower to act against  racial discrimination.  Powell, a Democrat,  later rewarded Eisenhower by  endorsing  him in the  1956 presidential election.

The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education didn't happen in a vacuum.  Charles Sumner had argued before the Massachusetts high court that "separate but equal" was impossible a century earlier in the Roberts case which had served as a precedent for the ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson.  Society had changed, at least outside the south. 

Integration was the coming thing.  The nation's principle government organization, the military, had been integrated as had its most popular sport, baseball.  The justices might have been aware of Dwight Eisenhower's role in eliminating segregated theaters and other facilities on military bases and eliminating segregated facilities in the District of Columbia even though Eisenhower had acted quietly.