Eclipse Magazine - Produced by NABVETS 2015 First Edition - Page 9

by Jennifer Chiesa

Congressman Charles Rangel

hasn’t had a bad day since Kunu-ri

would instead serve for four years before receiving an
honorable discharge, and being awarded a Purple Heart
and Bronze Star for valor.
The experience of serving in the Korean War changed
Rangel in ways he never expected, and he arrived home
brimming with self-confidence, and ready for whatever
the world would throw at him. But the world didn’t quite
welcome him with the open arms he expected. “I thought
I was somebody special when I came back from Korea…
but the jobs I could get when I got home were the same
jobs I could get before I left.”
After an especially bad day on the job pushing a
handcart in the rain in New York’s garment district,
Rangel decided he needed to make a change. “I went
down to the veteran’s center, basically manned by
disabled white WWII veterans…At the end of the day,
they gave me an aptitude test and said that I should be a
mortician. I told them I had seen more than enough dead
bodies to last a lifetime,” he remembers.
Though he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, he knew
college would be the way out. Rangel settled on studying
law because he thought it might impress his grandfather,
who had helped to raise him after his oft-unemployed
father left when Rangel was six years old. “My
grandfather spent over 30 years as an elevator operator
in the criminal justice building. He only got excited about
the judges and D.A.s and lawyers there. He held them in
high esteem. When I told him I was going to do that, he
just laughed and laughed.”
After completing two years of high school course work
in only one year to obtain his GED in 1953, Rangel
continued on to New York University with the help of the
G.I. Bill, making the dean’s list and graduating in 1957.
He won a full scholarship to attend St. John’s University
School of Law, and graduated with a Juris Doctor degree
in 1960.
Though a life of public service hadn’t been his boyhood
dream, it suited him perfectly from the start. In 1961, U.S.
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy appointed Rangel
as the Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District

of New York. He served through 1962. “I decided that
putting people in jail wasn’t really what I wanted to be
about.” Taken under the wing of Tuskegee Airman and
NAACP leader Percy Sutton, Rangel was elected to two
terms in the New York State Assembly, then defeated
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. in the primary on his way to
being elected to the House of Representatives in 1970.
“I was satisfied with a state office, and I never really
planned to go further. But if you are in a profession you
enjoy, you don’t have to plan where you’re going. It just
takes you there.”
Once in Congress, Rangel rose through the Democratic
ranks, founding the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971
and becoming the first African American member of the
powerful House Ways and Means Committee in 1974.
Tip O’Neill would make him Deputy Majority Whip in
1983. But Rangel always saw his increasing influence as
a means to an end—advancing equal rights and equal
opportunity for all, both at home and abroad.
In December 1984, Rangel was arrested while
participating in an anti-apartheid rally in New York.
In 1987, he took his passion for bringing meaningful
change to South Africa to the House floor as the Rangel
Amendment, which called for the removal of tax credits
for corporations operating in that country. Several major
companies left South Africa because of the amendment,
and the resulting economic destabilization was cited by
Nelson Mandela as a major factor in the end of apartheid
there.
Closer to home, Rangel fought hard to decrease the
number of low-income households on the tax rolls in
the Tax Reform Act of 1986. He also authored the LowIncome Housing Tax Credit portion of the bill, which
created more affordable housing in the U.S., and when
negotiations between the House-Senate joint conference
stalled, the Congressman known as just plain “Charlie” to
representatives and janitors alike, used his genial manner
and disarming candor to help broker an agreement.
And though most of the men from his battalion are
now gone, the Korean War hero continues to honor
them through his work on veteran’s issues. He has

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