One Family

Adam Clayton Powell IV long volunteered in the soup kitchen at the Mass. Ave. Baptist Church, where he fried steak and whipped mashed potatoes to serve to hundreds who are hungry. “I feel their experiences in my heart,” he says of many who are homeless.

“One reason I’d like to go into corporate leadership is to build a company to employ these people,” says Powell, who often asks panhandlers on the street when they last ate, and rather than just give them money, takes them out. “So many have powerful stories to tell and really need someone to listen. I’ll never forget one guy who gave me a big hug after we shared a couple Dunkin’ Donuts sandwiches.”

Raised in New York, the 26-year-old graduate student is the grandson of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the U.S. Congressman who led a 40-year fight against racial segregation, a champion of the poor and a minister who believed passionately in love and justice and who practiced what he preached.

He died when Adam was two, but stories of him couldn’t be more alive. “The big thing you hear is he was not afraid to speak his mind,” he says, laughing. “You hear that all over. People tell me, ‘Gee, you’re a lot quieter than him.’”

In 1937, Powell became pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and built it into the largest Protestant congregation in North America. He organized picket lines and mass meetings to demand reforms at institutions that refused to hire blacks and administered a church-based relief program that provided food, clothes, jobs, and housing for thousands. In 1941, he was the first black elected to the New York City Council and later was elected to the U.S. House, where he served 11 terms and led passage of 50 major pieces of legislation, including minimum wage acts, antipoverty acts, education and vocational training, student loans, and aid to elementary and secondary education.

“He valued family and education, but his big concern was for those who are less fortunate,” Powell says. “We were taught we should carry on and embody these same values, that we have a special responsibility.

“We learned never to feel above anyone else. My mother would say, ‘People in India have one pair of shoes for the whole family. You’re asking me for a red pair and a blue pair? Oh my God.’ I heard that at least once a week,” he says, adding, eventually it sunk in.

Others First

Like his father, Adam Powell III, ‘67, he chose MIT as an undergraduate because he heard it did research not just to make money or to satisfy scientific curiosity, but to help humanity. Now, he wants only that his work in materials science will benefit others around the world.

He dreams how his work might advance agriculture, communication, transportation, how, say, creating a lighter, more fuel-efficient aircraft might bring down the cost to carry food to the Third World, or, how he might improve communication in underdeveloped countries to spark in us all “a desire to open our hearts and spread our wealth rather than cling to an insular, selfish tendency.” He plans first to work in industry, then move into a leadership position–corporate, political, or maybe even theological. In the meantime, he says, concern for others is more than just talk.

For seven years, he tutored children in reading and math at a Dorchester neighborhood house and often brings five middle-schoolers from Mattapan to MIT for concerts and movies. As a grad student he used much of his $15,000 stipend to give those children jobs “to empower them,” he says. First he encouraged them to shovel snow, then when faced with a project that required much data entry, he hired them for four hours a week at $5 an hour and for every 2.5 hours gave each one a five-minute break.

Better World

If we all thought more about helping each other, the world would be a better place, says Powell, who tries (hard) to follow his grandfather’s example of love and justice.

Maybe the world hasn’t made great strides since his grandfather’s day, he says, “but we’ve made some progress in terms of work and education for minorities; the end of the Cold War; changes in South Africa; and all the democracies that spread throughout the world in the 1980s.

“My grandfather felt the only way we’re going to get beyond selfishness and diviseness is to have strong determined leaders to convince people to do what is right and good rather than our simply being led by popular opinion. He believed we must inspire people to rise above their own personal desires, to know each other, and to communicate with people who are not like themselves. He believed that passionately.”

Powell says carrying his grandfather’s name is a privilege, but with privilege comes responsibility. Consistenly, he tries to uphold the family values: to give, forgive, and do what is good, right, and fair, not just for himself, but for everyone. “If you take your commitments seriously,” he says, “nothing less will do.”

by Liz Karagianis

On Topic: entrepreneurship, public service, students