The fall of Adam
Sir: I have no wish to enter into the Adam Clayton Powell controversy although I think perhaps Mr Murray Kempton does whitewash the Rev and Hon Mr Powell a little bit. However, a Congress which has Senator Eastman as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is not in a very strong position to censure the ex-chairman of the House Labor Committee.
I myself lost my faith in Mr Powell when he left the great jazz pianist, Miss Hazel Scott, his wife, for less interesting female companions. However, the letter (24 February) from Mr Griffin from Darmstadt, Germany, contains a very remarkable statement. Indeed, 'the wildest statement in a thoroughly fatuous' letter is that 'Southern con- gressmen and negroes' are 'only slightly more akin than oil and water.'
There are about 120 Southern members of Con- gress (in the strict sense of the term, representing the old Confederacy). It is statistically highly prob- able that quite a lot of this 120 are, in the strict genetic sense, akin to negroes since a great part of the negro population of the United States is, in fact, partly, or in some instances mostly, white. It is true that the South is excepted from all laws of probability, but if Mr Griffin asserts that none of the 120 have negro 'kin,' I shall take the liberty of
disbelieving him. Has he ever looked at Mr Powell? Mr Powell is in fact less dark than at least one Southern Senator I could name. His enemies assert that he has denied, at times, being a negro at all, and has explained his slightly dusky com- plexion by Cherokee blood. But if Mr Griffin can believe what he writes about Southern members of Congress, he can, as the Duke of Wellington said, believe anything.
Peterhouse, Cambridge.
Denis Brogan
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