THE man who defeated Adam Clayton Powell by a slim margin in a Democratic congressional primary last week has made a lifetime habit of doing the difficult and making it look easy. Charles Bernard Rangel, a 40-year-old black state assemblyman, unseated King Adam gently, avoiding harsh frontal attacks, building productive political alliances, and working, working, working. An ebullient native of the Harlem district that he will represent—unless Powell makes good a threat to run as an independent and succeeds—Rangel is a high school dropout who eventually earned a law degree. When he quit school in 1948, he joined the Army. During...
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