Early Years
Powell (birth name: Adam Clayton Powell Diago) was born to Civil Rights leader and former congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and his third wife Yvette Diago in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Powell's maternal grandfather Gonzalo Diago was a mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico and served as such from 1941 to 1945. When his parents separated, Powell's mother was granted custody, and he was raised and educated in Puerto Rico. Powell has an older half-brother, Adam Clayton Powell III.
In 1980, Powell changed his name to Adam Clayton Powell IV when he moved to the United States to study at Howard University in Washington, DC. (He is often confused with his nephew, also named Adam Clayton Powell IV, son of Adam Clayton Powell III). He later earned a law degree from Fordham University in New York.
Read more about this topic: Adam Clayton Powell IV (politician)
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early and/or years:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“A few years later, I would have answered, “I never repeat anything.” That is the ritual phrase of society people, by which the gossip is reassured every time.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)