Atlanta Daily World

CAPITAL SPOTLIGHT
By LOUIS LAUTIER
For The NNPA News Service

Says Powell Has Short Memory

THE MEMORY of Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Harlem Democrat, regarding Congressional investigations of crime in the Nation's Capital is short.

Having got the worse of a setto with Nelson Rockefeller during the New York gubernatorial campaign over Rockefeller's contributions to the NAACP. Powell tried to grab the headlines by announcing that he would come to Washington and undertake a study of crime and, if necessary, have a Congressional investigation.

Two investigations of crime in the District of Columbia have been conducted in recent years. In both of them, colored racketeers got the worse of it. The white racketeers, with one or two exceptions, were not molested. Grafting white cops, even those who were bossing the narcotics peddlers, went scotfree.

The most recent of these investigations was the one conducted by the Senate District of Columbia Committee while the late Senator Matthew M. Neely, West Virginia Democrat, was the chairman, and Arnold Bauman a New York Republican, was the crime committee counsel.

INDICTMENT QUASHED
The final chapter of that investigation was written in the District Court here Wednesday when Judge Alexander Holtzoff quashed an indictment charging former Police Chief Robert J. Barrett with short changing the Federal Government on his income taxes.

The tax evasion charges against Barrett resulted from a questionnaire District of Columbia policemen were ordered to make out and file with the crime investigating committee. Barrett's filled-in questionnaire showed income for which Barrett could not account to the committee.

There was testimony that the head of the narcotics squad actually gave the greenlight to dope peddlers.

In one case, he gave "Jim Yellow," who had just been released from a Michigan prison for dope peddling, the alternative of going back to prison on a frame-up or peddling the stuff.

"Jim Yellow" eventually went to jail when a Federal narcotics agent brought in an informer who had served time with him in the Michigan prison and the police lieutenant was unable to protect him.

A lot of other nondescript characters like "Bucklejaws" and "Catfish" Turner went to jail, but the police lieutenant and a member of his squad who collected from the peddlers were turned loose.

Likewise, a lot of colored persons who were engaged in the numbers racket were hauled before the committee and grilled.

But the crime investigators had difficulty in finding a single white person who was a dope addict, a dope peddler, or a numbers operator.

MUST INTRODUCE RESOLUTION
As to the mechanics, Powell would have to introduce a resolution in order to get a House investigation of crime in the District of Columbia.

Once the resolution was introduced, he would lose complete control of it. The resolution would be referred to the House District of Columbia Committee, on which Southerners retain a strong grip.

The chairman of that committee is John L. McMillan of South Carolina. Other members include Oren Harris of Arkansas, Thomas G. Abernethy of Mississippi, Howard W. Smith of Virginia, Olin E. Teague of Texas, James C. Davis of Georgia, James H. Morrison of Louisiana, John Bell Williams of Mississippi, John Dowdy of Texas, and D. R. (Billy) Matthews of Florida, Democrats, and Joel T. Broyhill, Virginia Republican, who would be more in place in the political machine of Senator Harry F. Byrd.

A subcommittee of this committee, headed by Davis, an admitted ex-member of the Ku Klux Klan, investigated integration of District of Columbia public schools. The job was a nasty smear of colored school children.

The committee branded them as thieves, liars, sex crazy, and mental midgets.

A minority report was filed. But the bigots distributed only the majority report. It was one of the campaign documents used to inflame the racial prejudices of Little Rock voters to defeat the proposition of whether Little Rock would have integrated public schools.

The Davis subcommittee imported Willie Gerber, a hatchet man for the late Boss Ed Crump of Memphis, as committee counsel.

Gerber harangued Little Rock people about the effects of desegregation in the District of Columbia, repeating all of the stereotypes he had put into the committee report.

Powell is not a member of the District of Columbia Committee. Representative William L. Dawson of Illinois is. Dawson tried to derail the school investigation but had no success.

The crime rate in the District of Columbia is high, but it is not as high as that of Harlem.

BEGIN AT HOME
The preachers say charity begins at home. Powell should begin his good works in the vicinity of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York.