Before Barack Obama, Colin Powell, and Martin Luther King, Jr., there was Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. -- the most celebrated and controversial black politician of his generation. An astute businessman known as Mr. Civil Rights, he represented Harlem for twenty-four years in the House of Representatives. He was a man of the cloth and a civil rights leader, but Powells reputation for flamboyance, arrogance, and womanizing made him his own worst enemy. In this towering and definitive biography, acclaimed journalist Wil Haygood paints a vivid portrait of one of black Americas most memorable dignitaries.