The Isabel Washington Powell Photograph Collection depicts some aspects of her life as a public figure, teacher, and wife of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.Images depict Powell at Adam Clayton Powell, Jr's swearing-in ceremony to the New York City Council in 1942, with Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., Mattie Powell (Mrs. Adam Powell, Sr.), and Powell political associate Joe Ford; attending an unidentified theater performance; singing at an unidentified event at the Savoy Ballroom; talking with a group of servicemen (1940s); with entertainer Willie Bryant, Mrs. Ercot, the first "Black Mother of the Year," and an unidentified police officer; as a New York public school teacher in a library with a group of her students at an unidentified Brooklyn school; giving an unidentified schoolchild a haircut at P.S. 67 in Manhattan; and posing next to a school display honoring Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. The collection does not depict any of Powell's theatrical performances.
Content: Some items have photographer's handstamp on verso; some items have handwritten descriptive information on verso.
Content: Collection contains work by James Gilbert, J.J. Photos (Brooklyn, N.Y.), and Photokraft (New York, N.Y.).
Biographical/historical: Isabel Washington Powell was an actress, an educator, and the first wife of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Born in 1908, she moved to New York as a teenager and became a chorus girl at Connie's Inn and the Cotton Club during the mid-1920s. About 1933, she gave up a brief career as a Broadway actress to marry Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who was then Assistant Pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church. The marriage ended in 1944, the year he was elected to Congress. Isabel Powell worked as a special education teacher for the New York Public School system during the 1970s and 1980s.
Content: Forms part of the Isabel Washington Powell Collection, 1929-1981.
Physical Description
Extent: 8 items (1 folder)
Extent: 8 photographic prints :silver gelatin , b&w ;21 x 26 cm. and smaller.
