Known in his Harlem, New York, district as the “Lion of
Lenox Avenue,” Representative Charles B. Rangel rose to
become the first African-American chair of the powerful
Ways and Means Committee. With a House career that
spanned 46 years, Rangel—whose safe Democratic district
provided him with seniority and stature on Capitol Hill—
was one of the longest-serving Members of Congress in
American history. Rangel helped found the Congressional
Black Caucus (CBC) in 1971 and was a staunch defender
of urban economic development and international trade.
His assignment to the Ways and Means Committee gave
him considerable influence over America’s tax policy, and
he shaped major bills that ranged from anti-drug policies to
health care reform. Upon his retirement, Rangel reflected
on his long career, noting, “Thank God I never had to decide
between doing the right thing or being defeated at the polls.”1
Charles Bernard Rangel was born on June 11, 1930,
in Harlem, New York City, to Blanche Wharton and
Ralph Rangel. The second of three children, he was raised
by his mother and his maternal grandfather, Charles
Wharton. From 1948 to 1952, Rangel served in the U.S.
Army and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple
Heart for his service in the Korean War when he led 40 U.S. soldiers from behind enemy lines despite being wounded
himself. After returning to New York and graduating from
DeWitt Clinton High School, Rangel earned a bachelor’s
degree from New York University under the GI bill in
1957. Three years later, he earned a law degree at St. John’s
University Law School. In 1963, U.S. Attorney General
Robert Francis Kennedy appointed him Assistant U.S.
Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He later
served as an aide to the speaker of the New York assembly
and was counsel for the President’s Commission to Revise
the Draft Laws in 1966. In March 1965, Rangel participated
in the famous voting rights march led by Martin Luther
King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. In 1966,
he won a seat in the New York state assembly, representing
central Harlem. During his time in Albany, he forged a
bipartisan friendship with Republican Governor Nelson A.
Rockefeller. On July 26, 1964, Rangel married the former
Alma Carter. They raised two children: Steven and Alicia.2
As an assemblyman, Rangel supported Harlem’s
renowned but embattled U.S. Representative Adam Clayton
Powell Jr., whom he considered a mentor. Powell had
represented the majority-Black district—encompassing
Harlem, East Harlem, the Upper West Side, Washington Heights, and Inwood—since its creation in 1944. But by
1968, Powell’s extended vacations to the Bahamas amid
multiple congressional ethics investigations had begun to
swing public opinion against him. In 1970, Rangel, rather
than get dragged down by Powell’s eroding reputation,
challenged the incumbent in the Democratic primary,
partially out of “plain political survival.” Backed by New
York Mayor and former Congressman John Vliet Lindsay,
Rangel made the race about giving Harlem “effective
representation” which he claimed it had lost under Powell’s
inconsistent tenure. Rangel defeated Powell by only 150
votes in the primary that featured three other candidates,
and he later prevailed in the general election. Until ethical
issues arose in the late 2000s, Rangel rarely faced primary
threats. One of the few close contests was in 1994 when
Adam Clayton Powell IV, the son of Rangel’s predecessor,
won 33 percent of the vote against Rangel. In his
subsequent 22 re-elections, Rangel won the general contest
by lopsided majorities of 80 percent or more.3
During his first term in the 92nd Congress (1971–1973),
Rangel was assigned seats on the Public Works Committee,
the Science and Astronautics Committee, and the Select
Committee on Crime. In May 1972, Rangel left Public
Works to join the Judiciary Committee. In the 93rd Congress
(1973–1975), Rangel left Science and Astronautics for the
Committee on the District of Columbia and maintained his
seats on the Judiciary and Select Committee on Crime, which
soon disbanded. In the 94th Congress (1975–1977), Rangel
left both Judiciary and District of Columbia to join the
powerful Ways and Means Committee. From the moment
Rangel arrived for the opening of the 92nd Congress, Mayor
Lindsay and Governor Rockefeller lobbied Wilbur Daigh
Mills of Arkansas, the chair of Ways and Means, to give the
new Representative a seat on the committee. It took four
years, but Rangel became the first African-American member
of Ways and Means; 32 years later, in 2007, he became the
first African-American chair of the prestigious panel. He
was also assigned to the Select Committee on Narcotics
Abuse and Control in 1975 and chaired that panel from
the 98th through the 102nd Congress (1983–1993). From
the 104th through the 114th Congress (1995–2017), Rangel
served on the Joint Committee on Taxation, which he chaired
during the 110th and 111th Congresses (2007–2011).
Rangel was a founding member of the CBC in 1971
and served as the group’s chairman in the 94th Congress.
Missouri Representative William Lacy “Bill” Clay Sr. credited Rangel with creating the group’s name because
the New York representative explained, “protecting black
interests was the primary reason most of us were elected.”
As chairman of the CBC in 1974, Rangel focused the caucus
on pursuing shared legislative goals specific to poor, urban,
and African-American constituents.4
Rangel’s short tenure on the Judiciary Committee
coincided with that panel’s impeachment hearings of
President Richard M. Nixon. Even prior to the Watergate
scandal, Rangel had been a cosponsor on a House resolution
introduced by John Conyers Jr. of Michigan that called for
President Nixon’s impeachment because of his escalation
of the Vietnam War. During the Watergate hearings,
Rangel often intently focused on the executive branch’s
efforts to withhold evidence. Years after the hearings,
Rangel remembered that “as a former prosecutor I was
focused on what I saw as a clear path to his conviction.”
In late July 1974, the Judiciary Committee approved three
articles of impeachment, but President Nixon resigned
before the House could vote. Rangel came away from the
impeachment hearings believing the episode was a “test of
the strength of the Constitution . . . that when this or any
other President violates his sacred oath of office, the people
are not left hapless, that they can, through the House of
Representatives charge him, and his guilt will finally be
decided in the hall of the U.S. Senate.”5
As a member of the Select Committee on Crime, Rangel
participated in congressional investigations into the Attica
Prison uprising in New York in September 1971 that
resulted in 43 deaths. Less than a week after the riot, Rangel
and other members of the committee visited the prison
and spent two days interviewing staff, prison officials, and
inmates. Rangel and the committee later held hearings on
“prisons in turmoil,” focusing on Attica and other recent
prison riots. During the hearings, Rangel expressed concern
over conditions in the prisons and the mistreatment of
prisoners, and he dismissed suggestions by prison officials
that the riots were just the product of revolutionaries. For
Rangel, prison riots and other examples of prison failures
were especially salient to communities of color because
prison populations were, he noted, “disproportionately
black and Hispanic.” “If the prisons fail, we can expect the
present revolving door system of crime and punishment to
continue,” he wrote in a newspaper column in 1973.6
Early in his tenure, Rangel worked to combat drug
trafficking and drug use because, he explained, everyday issues like health, education, and housing had “been
corrupted either physically or morally by the drug addiction
problem.” In the 1980s, amid the rise in the use of cocaine
and crack cocaine, especially, Rangel, then the chair of the
Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, gained
wide-spread recognition for his anti-drug legislative work.
In 1989, Ebony called Rangel “the Front-line General in
the War on Drugs.” Despite a shared interest in the “war
on drugs,” Rangel publicly criticized the Ronald Reagan
administration for not doing enough to prevent illegal drugs
from coming into the United States. “The administration
claims to have declared a war on drugs, but when was the
last time we heard our commander in chief talk about the
international drug problem?” Rangel asked. Rangel was a
vocal supporter of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which
increased funding for local and state police, interdiction,
educational programs, and treatment and rehabilitation.
During the floor debate, Rangel successfully passed an
amendment that increased funding for law enforcement.
“We cannot wage a narcotics war with peashooters,” he
lectured to his colleagues.7
Despite his advocacy for the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act,
Rangel soon opposed one particularly controversial aspect
of the law. The law included new mandatory minimum
sentencing requirements that set widely divergent penalties
for the possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine versus 500
grams of cocaine. The mandatory minimums led to an
increase in prison population of often non-violent, low-level
users and dealers. Activists, scholars, and lawmakers soon
argued that the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity had racially
discriminatory outcomes as Black offenders more often
would be convicted for possession of crack cocaine than
cocaine. In 1993, Rangel introduced legislation to end the
sentencing disparity. “It’s clearly unconstitutional and way
out of line to be such a different level of crime for basically
the same type of drug. No one can justify the 100-to-1
ratio. Clearly we are talking about different neighborhoods,
not different crimes,” he said. In 2010, Rangel supported
the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act that reduced the
disparity from 100-to-1 to 18-to-1.8
On Ways and Means, Rangel worked to open economic
opportunities for minority groups and poor Americans.
Rangel authored the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit in
the Tax Reform Act of 1986, a measure that significantly
boosted affordable housing in the United States. In 1993,
he authored a provision providing tax breaks to promote investments and jobs in low-income neighborhoods called
“empowerment zones.” Tax benefits for enterprise and
empowerment zones were later included in the Omnibus
Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. And as part of an
economic stimulus bill to rejuvenate the U.S. economy
after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Rangel
extended unemployment benefits for workers in industries
affected by the attacks, especially those in New York’s travel
and hospitality businesses.9
In 1987, Rangel contributed to the demise of apartheid
in South Africa as the author of the “Rangel amendment”
which denied certain tax benefits to U.S. corporations
working there. As U.S. businesses pulled out of South
Africa, the country’s revenue streams dried up and the
apartheid government grew weaker before collapsing amid
democratic reforms. Thirteen years later, Rangel worked
to open commerce by supporting the African Growth
and Opportunity Act, providing new incentives for U.S.
companies to begin trading with sub-Saharan Africa. He
also helped found the Charles B. Rangel International
Affairs Program through Howard University in 2002,
which aimed to significantly increase the representation of
minorities in the U.S. Foreign Service.10
In 2003, Rangel introduced legislation to reinstate the
military draft, revisiting an issue he had worked on before
his first House campaign. “How can anyone support the
war and not support the draft?” he asked amid U.S. conflicts
in Afghanistan and Iraq. He argued repeatedly that the
government relied on disadvantaged and working-class
enlistees to fight its battles. His bills to reinstate the draft
never gained much traction; in fact, Rangel voted against his
own bill in 2004, sending it down to defeat 402 to 2. Rangel
insisted he did so to protest “procedural finagling.” Rangel
also sponsored the Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief
Tax (HEART) Act to provide financial help to America’s
veterans. The bill became law on June 17, 2008.11
During his long tenure on the Ways and Means
Committee, Rangel frequently clashed with its chairmen,
Democrats and Republicans alike. On several occasions,
Rangel and the CBC quarreled with Ways and Means
Chair Daniel David Rostenkowski of Illinois due to
Rostenkowski’s relationship with Chicago Mayor Richard
Daley, who often pushed for policies the caucus viewed
as discriminatory and detrimental to African Americans.
At a time when Members rarely went toe-to-toe with
the powerful Rostenkowski, Rangel’s independence and his role as the CBC’s voice in conference committee
deliberations often put him at odds with the chair. Shortly
after Republicans gained the majority in 1995, Rangel
sparred with new Chair William Reynolds Archer Jr. of
Texas over the elimination of tax preferences for minorities
in the media.12
For his part, Rangel liked to stress that he found common
ground on tax reform with Republican leadership despite
rising partisanship in the House. But things were different
under Archer’s successor, William Marshall Thomas of
California. Tensions boiled over late on a Friday in July 2003,
when Thomas’s attempt to rush a bill through committee led
Rangel to sequester his fellow Democrats in the committee
library to read the bill. Insults flew and Thomas’s staff,
intending to remove Rangel and his colleagues from the
room, summoned the Capitol Police and the House Sergeant
at Arms. Tensions subsided and the committee left shortly
afterward for floor business, but the fallout proved rancorous
and led Thomas to issue an apology.13
Rangel ascended to the chairmanship of Ways and
Means when Democrats regained the majority in 2007.
As chair, Rangel worked in a bipartisan manner with
ranking members James O. McCrery III of Louisiana and,
later, David Lee Camp of Michigan to pass small business
tax breaks, relief for Hurricane Katrina victims, and a ban
on genetic discrimination for health insurance. He also
worked alongside the George W. Bush administration to
extend the Andean Trade Preference Act with Peru that
reinforced labor and environmental standards. Though
many in the CBC expected Rangel to push legislation
important to the caucus (including hearings on reparations,
gun control legislation, and action against racial profiling),
Rangel insisted his position also made him accountable
to constituents outside the CBC. Rangel did address one
important concern of the CBC with legislation pumping
funds into the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. But
he made it clear that the legislation was about economic
fairness. “When God hit with Katrina, she didn’t give a
damn about color at all,” he said, “but she sure did give the
poor people a hard road to travel.”14
Rangel was chair of Ways and Means as the financial
crisis of 2008 unfolded, and the global economy went into
a recession. In January 2009, Rangel led the committee
markup of the sections of the House’s economic recovery
legislation. The committee’s bill included tax relief for
parents and for businesses to depreciate their equipment and prevent layoffs, and funds to invest in education and
technology training. Rangel also served on the conference
committee that resolved differences between the House
and Senate versions of the final bill. In February 2009,
President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act.15
As Ways and Means chair, Rangel shepherded early
versions of the Democrats’ landmark health care bill, the
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. For Rangel,
reforming the health care system was part of a career-long
effort to challenge income inequality. “We have a moral
obligation in terms of the number of people who have
lost their homes, gone into bankruptcy as a result of the
costs of providing health care,” Rangel explained during a
committee hearing. On July 17, 2009, he presided over a
16-hour markup that passed 23 to 18. Rangel joined his
fellow Democrats in turning back 32 amendments from
Republicans seeking to strip key provisions from the bill
including the employer mandate and the tax surcharge. As
the bill made its way through Congress, Rangel remained
involved in high-level meetings with party leaders.16
Rangel’s chairmanship was ultimately undone by a
string of ethics violations. Reports emerged in July 2008
that Rangel had accepted rent-controlled apartments in
New York at values far below market. In response, Rangel
requested an investigation of his personal finances. But
additional allegations arose of improper use of his office
resources and failure to disclose or pay taxes on $500,000
worth of assets in the Dominican Republic. Rangel fought
these claims every step of the way. The investigation dragged
on for two election cycles and lasted through the Democrats’
high-profile push to reform the country’s health care system.
“I don’t want anyone to feel embarrassed, awkward,” he
would later insist in a speech on the House Floor in 2010.
“Hey, if I was you, I may want me to go away, too. I am not
going away. I am here.” Nevertheless, Rangel took a leave of
absence as chair just days before President Barack Obama
signed the signature health care bill into law in March
2010. The leave of absence became permanent. The Ethics
Committee found him in violation of 11 of 13 charges and
voted 9 to 1 to recommend that the House censure the
Harlem Congressman. After the committee referred the
matter to the full House in December 2010, Speaker Nancy
Pelosi of California presided over the debate, with Zoe
Lofgren of California prosecuting and Robert C. “Bobby”
Scott of Virginia acting as Rangel’s defense. The House voted 333 to 79 to censure Rangel, making him the twenty-third
Representative to be censured in House history and
the first in nearly 30 years.17
Rangel’s ethical difficulties bolstered primary opponents.
He faced five challengers in 2010 and lost the backing
of the New York Times editorial board. Nevertheless, he
captured 51 percent in the primary; his closest rival Adam
Clayton Powell IV won 24 percent. Redistricting radically
changed Rangel’s old Harlem district in 2012, making it
majority Hispanic for the first time. That year, Adriano J.
Espaillat, a Dominican American and state assemblyman,
challenged Rangel in the Democratic primary, which
Rangel ultimately won 44 percent to Espaillat’s 42 percent.
Espaillat unsuccessfully challenged the results in the state
supreme court. Rangel’s vote total improved in a 2014
primary rematch, as he secured 47 percent of the vote
against Espaillat’s 44 percent. Rangel cruised to victory in
each general election.18
In the wake of his censure and with Democrats having
lost the House majority in 2010, Rangel’s influence waned.
He remained an ex officio member of Ways and Means in
the 112th Congress (2011–2013) before regaining full
status in the 113th Congress (2013–2015). He served as
ranking member on the Subcommittees on Trade in the
113th and 114th Congresses (2013–2017).19
Rangel retired following the conclusion of the 114th
Congress (2015–2017). Voting in the Democratic primary
in June 2016, he told reporters, “This is the first time in 46
years I couldn’t find my name.”20
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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