Charles Rangel Dead at 94

Charles Rangel, one of the longest-continually-serving congressmen in American history and a Purple Heart Veteran, died on Memorial Day, May 26, at age 94. 

“A towering figure in American politics and a champion for justice, equity, and opportunity, Congressman Rangel dedicated over four decades of his life to public service,” his family said in a statement Monday. “Throughout his career, Congressman Rangel fought tirelessly for affordable housing, urban revitalization, fair tax policies, and equal opportunities for all Americans.”

As a representative of New York’s 13th district, which included Rangel’s birthplace of Harlem, Rangel, or “the Lion of Lenox Avenue,” as he was sometimes called, served as a congressman for close to a half-century. He began his career in Congress in 1970 and retired 47 years later, in 2017. Although his tenure was marred by 11 counts of ethics violations, of which he was found guilty by a congressional ethics committee in 2010, Rangel, a liberal Democrat, was a singularly influential force in New York politics and one of the most important Black members of Congress for decades. 

“Charlie was a true activist: We’ve marched together, been arrested together and painted crack houses together,” the reverend Al Sharpton said in a statement. “My heart is broken by the passing of a lion of Harlem today.”

Rangel was the last surviving member of the Gang of Four, a coalition of Black politicians from Harlem which included former New York City mayor David Dinkins, state senator Basil Paterson, and local politician Percy Sutton. As a native and long-serving representative of Harlem, Rangel also became a cultural ambassador for the neighborhood, recalling stories in his later years of crossing paths with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Charlie Parker. In 2019, he spoke with Rolling Stone about the importance of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, the concert series that took place just before his election to Congress and was documented, more than 50 years later, in 2021’s Summer of Soul. “White folks might have a county fair, but we didn’t have cows, things like that,” Rangel told Rolling Stone. “We had the greatest jazz musicians in the world.”

Charles B. Rangel was born in 1930 in Harlem and had a turbulent upbringing. “I came up from nothing,” he said in 2018. “I was a fatherless high school dropout with a gift of living by my wits and hiding my inadequacies behind bravado.” In 1948, he enlisted in the Army, and soon found himself on the front lines of the Korean War, where he received a Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

After becoming a fixture in local politics, Rangel was elected to Congress in 1970 and co-founded the Congressional Black Caucus the very next year. During his tenure in Congress, Rangel fought for his working- and middle-class constituents: He was a key proponent of the Affordable Care Act, helped expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, created “empowerment zones” for low-income areas in his district, and helped improve relationships with countries like Haiti and Cuba. In 2007, he became the first Black politician to steer the House Ways and Means Committee. 

In 2010, the House Committee on Ethics found him guilty of 11 separate charges pertaining to his personal finances and financial disclosures. Still, he was re-elected in 2012 and served several more terms before retiring in 2017 at age 86. After announcing his retirement, Rangel reflected upon his long career. “Since November 30, 1950,” he said, referring to the day he was wounded in Korea, “no matter what crises we have gone through individually or collectively, Charlie Rangel has been blessed never, never, never to have a bad day.”

But speaking a decade earlier, Rangel reflected on the country he’d spent most of his adult life working for in an interview with Mother Jones. “The hopes and dreams of so many who have come to this country and those who have strived to get into the middle class and now, because of food prices and oil and an inequitable tax system, people are losing their home, their hope, their jobs, their kids’ tuition,” he said. “When a country loses that… it loses its heart.”