NEW YORK — Mourners are paying their respects to former U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel as his body lies in state Thursday at New York City Hall, an honor bestowed to a short list of political figures, including U.S. presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.
The outspoken, gravel-voiced Harlem Democrat died May 26 at a New York hospital. He was 94.
Rangel spent nearly five decades on Capitol Hill and was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
His funeral takes place Friday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in midtown Manhattan. A wake was held Tuesday at a church in Harlem, the upper Manhattan neighborhood where Rangel, nicknamed the “Lion of Lenox Avenue,” was born and raised.
Rangel’s body arrived at City Hall on Wednesday, where there was a private evening viewing for his family in the landmark neoclassical building at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge in lower Manhattan.
On Thursday morning, a small group of mourners quietly came to pay their respects in City Hall as the surrounding streets bustled with tourists and workers.
Rangel’s closed casket sat in the building’s marbled rotunda draped with an American flag. Uniformed police stood at rigid attention on either side of him, backed by the state and nation’s flags.
Mike Keogh, a 63-year-old lobbyist and former city council staffer, was among those who knew Rangel personally.
“He had the greatest voice in New York politics at the time. It was so rich and so full,” recalled Keogh. “It just made you feel really warm to be around him and to really hang on every word.”
Tina Marie grew up in Harlem and recalled Rangel as a part of the neighborhood’s famed Gang of Four— Black Harlemites who rose to the very top of city and state politics in the 1970s through the 1990s.
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.
“I didn’t get to make the other three people’s funerals so I wanted to come and pay my respects,” said Marie, who now works for the state education department steps from City Hall. “I didn’t agree with all the things they did, but they stood up for people who couldn’t stand up for themselves.”
Besides Presidents Lincoln and Grant, the others accorded the City Hall honors after death include statesman Henry Clay, newspaper publisher Horace Greeley and Civil War generals Abner Doubleday and Joseph Hooker.
The last person to lie in state in City Hall was City Councilman James Davis, who was assassinated by a political opponent in the council’s chambers, located the floor above the rotunda, in 2003.
Doors opened for the public to pay their respects to Rangel at 9 a.m. Thursday.
The viewing will run until 5 p.m. and will be followed by an honor guard ceremony with pallbearers representing the 369th Regiment, an all-Black unit from World War I known as the Harlem Hellfighters.
Rangel’s funeral at St. Patrick’s on Friday will also be public and livestreamed.
The Korean War vet defeated legendary Harlem politician Adam Clayton Powell in 1970 to start his congressional career.
Rangel went on to become the dean of the New York congressional delegation and the first African American to chair the powerful Ways and Means Committee in 2007.
He was censured in 2010 by his fellow House members — the most serious punishment short of expulsion — following an ethics scandal.
Rangel relinquished his post on the House’s main tax-writing committee, but continued to serve until his retirement in 2017, becoming one of the longest-serving members in the chamber’s history.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, also a New York Democrat, lauded Rangel as a “patriot, hero, statesman, leader, trailblazer, change agent and champion for justice” when his death was announced last month.