Charles Rangel, former longtime N.Y. congressman who represented Harlem, dies at 94

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo also honored Rangel as his “mentor and friend.”

“He had that Harlem fire in his heart and a joy in his soul that no battle could extinguish,” Cuomo said in a statement, adding that “he never forgot where he came from.”

Rangel, a veteran of the Korean War, had been a high school dropout but eventually went to college on the G.I. Bill, getting degrees from New York University and St. John’s University Law School.

In 1970, he defeated legendary Harlem politician Adam Clayton Powell to start his congressional career. During the next 40-plus years, he became a legend himself — a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, dean of the New York congressional delegation, and, in 2007, the first Black chair of the influential Ways and Means Committee.

“I have always been committed to fighting for the little guy,” Rangel said in 2012.

Two years earlier, he had stepped down from the Ways and Means Committee amid an ethics cloud. The House would later censure him in a 333-79 vote, with nearly a dozen ethics violations that included breaching a gifts ban, improper use of influence and failure to disclose income.

After the House’s censure vote of 333-79, Rangel rose before his colleagues in sorrow.

“I know in my heart I am not going to be judged by this Congress,” he said. “I’ll be judged by my life in its entirety.”

Rangel remained in Congress and won the 2012 primary. His Harlem district overwhelmingly voted him in again as Barack Obama won a second presidential term.

Despite the political stain later in his career, his time in Congress was exceedingly busy.

According to the statement provided to the City College of New York, Rangel sponsored 40 bills and resolutions that became law throughout his tenure. His significant legislative accomplishments include championing the national Empowerment Zone program, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, and the Affordable Care Act, which Obama signed into law in 2010.

Rangel was chairman of the Ways and Means Committee when the Affordable Care Act was being heavily debated in Congress and he was under pressure from the ethics investigations.

In a 2009 interview with Time, Rangel was defiant when asked about his legacy.

“Well, as Rhett Butler once said in ‘Gone With the Wind,’ if I’m gone, quite frankly, I don’t give a damn,” he told the magazine.

Rangel served in Congress until 2017, when he retired. He lamented to The New York Times in 2016, when his eventual successor, Rep. Adriano Espaillat, was poised to become the first Dominican American elected to Congress. Rangel said he feared that meant his Harlem district would no longer have a Black representative.

“Can you tell the people in Boston that some day you won’t have an Irish congressman?” Rangel said.

Rangel was the last surviving member of the so-called “Gang of Four” — a group of Black political figures who wielded great power in New York City and state politics. The others were David Dinkins, New York City’s first Black mayor; Percy Sutton, who was Manhattan Borough president; and Basil Paterson, a deputy mayor and New York secretary of state.

The Congressional Black Caucus said in a statement Monday that its 61 members were mourning the loss of Rangel.

“His legacy is one of tireless advocacy, historic firsts, and dedication to justice and equality,” the caucus said. “May he rest in power and everlasting peace.”

Rangel is preceded in death by his wife, Alma, a social worker whom he first met in a Harlem ballroom in the 1950s; she died in 2024. The couple shared two children.