Originally Posted by Jim B.

Heard all * that * before,

Rangel's predecessor: Adam Clayton Powell.

Heard the joke too: NAACP = "National Association for the Advancement of Adam Clayton Powell" :

~~~~

wiki:

In 1944, Powell was elected as a Democrat to represent the Congressional District that included Harlem in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was the first black Congressman from New York State and the first from any Northern state other than Illinois in the Post-Reconstruction Era.


Powell addressing a citizens' committee mass meetingAs one of only two black Congressmen (the other being William Dawson),[4] Powell challenged the informal ban on black representatives using Capitol facilities reserved for white members only. He took black constituents to dine with him in the "Whites Only" House restaurant. He clashed with the many segregationists in his own party.

In 1956, Powell broke party ranks and supported President Dwight D. Eisenhower for re-election, saying the civil rights plank in the Democratic Party platform was too weak.

In 1958, he survived a determined effort by the Tammany Hall machine to oust him in the Democratic primary election.

In 1960, Powell, hearing of planned civil rights marches at the Democratic Convention that could embarrass the party or candidate, threatened to accuse Martin Luther King, Jr. of having a homosexual relationship with Bayard Rustin unless the marches were cancelled. King agreed to cancel the planned events and Rustin resigned from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.[5]

In 1961, after 15 years in Congress, Powell became chairman of the powerful Education and Labor Committee. In this position, he presided over federal programs for minimum wage increases, Medicaid, expanding the minimum wage to include retail workers, equal pay for women, education and training for the deaf, nursing education, vocational training and standards for wages and work hours, as well as aid for elementary and secondary education. Powell's committee proved very effective in enacting parts of President Kennedy's "New Frontier" and President Johnson's "Great Society" social programs and the War on Poverty. It managed "the successful reporting to the Congress of 49 pieces of bedrock legislation", as President Johnson put it in an 18 May, 1966, letter congratulating Powell on the fifth anniversary of his chairmanship.[6]

He was instrumental in passing legislation that made lynching a federal crime, as well as bills that desegregated public schools. He challenged the Southern practice of charging Blacks a poll tax to vote and stopped racist Congressmen from saying the word "******" in sessions of Congress.[citation needed]

However, by the mid-1960s, Powell was increasingly being criticized for mismanaging his committee's budget, taking trips abroad at public expense, and missing sittings of his committee. He was also under attack in his District, where his refusal to pay a slander judgment made him subject to arrest. He spent increasing amounts of time in Florida.

In January 1967, the House Democratic Caucus stripped Powell of his committee chairmanship. The full House refused to seat him until completion of the Judiciary Committee's investigation. Powell urged his supporters to "keep the faith, baby" while the investigation was under way. On March 1, the House voted 307 to 116 to exclude him. Powell said, "On this day, the day of March in my opinion, the end of the United States of America as the land of the free and the home of the brave."[7]

Powell won the Special Election to fill the vacancy caused by his exclusion but did not take his seat. He sued in Powell v. McCormack to retain his seat. In November 1968, Powell was again elected. On January 3, 1969, he was seated as a member of the 91st Congress; but he was fined $25,000 and denied seniority.[8] In June 1969, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the House had acted unconstitutionally when it excluded Powell, a duly elected member.[9]

Powell's increasing absenteeism was noted. In June 1970, he was defeated in the Democratic primary by Charles B. Rangel. That fall, he failed to get on the November ballot as an Independent; and he resigned as minister at the Abyssinian Baptist Church and moved to his retreat on Bimini. Rangel continues to represent the district (2010).