Barred by Congress : how a Mormon, a socialist, and an African American elected by the people were excluded from office / Robert M. Lichtman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lichtman, Robert M., 1933- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African American legislators--Legal status, laws, etc--History--20th century.

African American legislators.

United States. Congress. House--Expulsion--History--20th century.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 420 pages) : illustrations ;

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Lawrence, Kansas : University Press of Kansas, [2022]

Summary:

"On March 2, 1967, the New York Times ran the extra-large headline: "HOUSE EXCLUDES POWELL." The sensational story about Congress's exclusion of the long-term African American House member, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., led to a legal battle over the constitutionality of excluding a representative who had been duly elected by the people and met the constitutional requirements for office. Those who supported the exclusion cited the two most recent examples, namely, the exclusion in 1900 of Brigham H. Roberts, a polygamist Mormon elected in Utah, and the double exclusion in 1919 and 1920 of Victor L. Berger, a socialist newspaper editor elected in Wisconsin. All three of these controversial figures were political outsiders, and all three exclusions involved objectionable motives: religious bias (Roberts), political bias (Berger), and racial bias (Powell). Robert Lichtman has written the definitive work on exclusions and expulsions from Congress. In addition to providing biographies of three remarkable figures in American history, this work illuminates an often ignored or misunderstood aspect of congressional politics, which culminated in the landmark Supreme Court case, Powell v. McCormack. Denying the Most Unbounded Liberty-referring to Alexander Hamilton's claim in the Federalist Papers that the people's ability to choose their representatives is "the most unbounded liberty allowed"-tells the story of these three attempts to deny this liberty, what Hamilton calls "the true principle of a republic.""-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

An immigrant boy from England

Repression, prison, and politics

A race for Congress and church discipline

An election win and a nationwide campaign of vilification

The committee : exclusion or expulsion?

Exclusion and its aftermath

Immigrant, socialist, newspaperman, political boss

A term in the house, the Milwaukee leader, and the coming of the Great War

America at war, repression, and suppressing the leader

Elections, indictments, and the Chicago Trial

Committee hearings and an unsurprising exclusion

A second exclusion, the Supreme Court, and a return to the house

A young prince in Harlem and a neighborhood Civil Rights Movement

A combative house member, powell amendments, and notoriety

A political prosecution, a failed purge, and a new committee chairman

A productive but willful chairman and seeds of his fall

Bringing Adam down

Exclusion and a special slection

A historic Supreme Court decision.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780700632725

0700632727

OCLC:

1302111290