Debonair as ever, trading jokes with old acquaintances, the familiar figure hovered at the edge of the floor when the House convened last week. Despite his jaunty air, Adam Clayton Powell betrayed some of the nervousness of a dispossessed relative at a family reunion as his sometime colleagues took the oath of office from venerable House Speaker John McCormack.
A veteran of 22 years in Congress, Powell was banished in 1967 on charges that he misused some $40,000 of public funds. Now he had returned from exile. Re-elected by his faithful Harlem constituency six weeks after his expulsion, and re-elected again in...
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