Merle-Smith Campus AP African American Studies Welcomes Guest Speaker Mr. Adam Clayton Powell lll

Students in AP African American Studies at the Merle-Smith Campus recently had the opportunity to hear from Mr. Adam Clayton Powell III, a Moravian Academy grandparent and distinguished journalist and media executive whose career spans nearly six decades in news and broadcasting.

 

A graduate of MIT, Mr. Powell began his career running the university’s student radio station before joining CBS News, where he worked as one of Walter Cronkite’s lead producers. He shared with students how he served as a technical advisor during CBS’s coverage of the Apollo moon landings, a role that contributed to his becoming the first African American to report on the U.S. space program. 

 

His work at CBS also included producing coverage of the 1976 and 1980 presidential elections. He later went on to found multiple television and radio stations and, in the late 1980s, became NPR’s first African American senior executive. In the early 1990s, Quincy Jones selected him to serve as executive producer for Jesse Jackson’s television program. 

 

More recently, Mr. Powell has held leadership roles in higher education, including serving as Vice Provost at the University of Southern California, where he currently leads an election cybersecurity initiative he established in 2020.

 

In addition to reflecting on his own professional journey, Mr. Powell also shared insights into the legacy of his father, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who represented Harlem in the U.S. House of Representatives for 25 years and was the first African American Congressman from New York State. Students learned about his father’s significant legislative impact and his role in advancing major civil rights-era policy, including contributions connected to the Civil Rights Act.