Charles Rangel

Charles Bernard Rangel was born on the eleventh of June 1930 in Harlem, New York City, the son of Ralph Rangel, a Puerto Rican migrant who departed the household when Charles was a boy, and Blanche Wharton Rangel, an African American woman whose family carried roots in Virginia. Raised in modest circumstances by his mother and grandfather, he came of age on the streets he would one day represent, drawing from Harlem both his character and his cause.

As a young man he served in the United States Army during the Korean War, earning the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for valor after leading a group of soldiers out of a deadly encirclement at the Battle of Kunu-ri in 1950. Returning home, he graduated from New York University in 1957 and from St. John's University School of Law in 1960, transforming hardship into the foundation of a lifetime of public service.

Rangel entered the New York State Assembly and then, in 1970, unseated the storied incumbent Adam Clayton Powell Jr., winning the Harlem congressional seat he would hold for forty-six years, from 1971 to 2017. A founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, he rose in 2007 to become the first African American to chair the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, wielding influence over the nation's tax and trade laws.

He died on the twenty-sixth of May 2025, Memorial Day, in the Harlem he loved, at the age of ninety-four. A soldier decorated in war and a statesman honored in peace, Charles Rangel gave nearly a century of dignity, courage, and devotion to his people — and Harlem's son is remembered with honor.