The Powell House was the summer home of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. from 1937 to 1944 and of Isabel Washington Powell from 1937 to the present, and it became a popular landmark. Adam Clayton Powell represented the Harlem community of New York City in the U.S. Congress from 1945 to 1970 as the first African American elected to Congress from the East since Reconstruction. As chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, he was a major force behind the passage of civil rights legislation during the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies, and his Powell Amendments brought major measures of social justice to American life. Also known as Reverend Powell, he pastored the 3,000-member Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem from 1937 to 1971 and was instrumental in bringing many of his church members to the island. Isabel Powell was an actress and singer who appeared in three Broadway shows during the late 1920s and early 1930s, was a lead dancer at the Cotton Club in Harlem, and later served as a special education teacher in the New York public schools for over thirty years. Since 1945, she spent every summer there with neighbors, family, and friends. Among the Powells' guests was the African American explorer and co-discoverer of the North Pole in 1909, Matthew Henson. Adam Clayton Powell loved Martha's Vineyard, was an avid fisherman, and was respected for his civic and community-building skills on the island.