E-mail a friendRep. Charles Rangel
airdate April 10, 2007
Dean of the New York State congressional delegation, Rep. Charles Rangel is in his 19th term in the House. In January '07, he became the first African American chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee. The Harlem native authored the low-income tax credit to stimulate affordable housing development in urban areas. He's a decorated Korean War vet and founding member and former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. Rangel writes about his journey in the memoir, And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since.
A funny story about getting an FBI background check (1:29).
Rep. Charles Rangel
Tavis: Congressman Charles Rangel's rise from the streets of Harlem to the halls of Congress is a remarkable story. Along the way he served and was severely wounded in the Korean War. After the war, he came back to New York, finished high school, college, and law school and became increasingly involved in politics. He was first elected to Congress in 1970, and is now chairman of perhaps the most powerful committee in all of Congress, the House Ways and Means committee.
His new book is called "And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since: From the Streets of Harlem to the Halls of Congress." He joins us tonight from New York. Congressman, an honor to have you on the program, sir.
Rep. Charles Rangel: It's an honor to be with you, Tavis.
Tavis: Let me start by asking two rather silly questions before I get to the good stuff here, but questions I've always wanted to know the answers to. And as often as you and I have talked over the years, I've never asked you these two questions. So, one, has your voice - I get asked about my voice all the time, as raspy as it is - has your voice always been that way? Because so much of what people know about you is that gravelly, raspy voice that we hear on the floor of Congress, in radio interviews, on TV interviews. What about that voice, Mr. Rangel?
Rangel: I've been asking the guys I was raised with all the time, and they look at me silly and says, "I don't remember what you sounded like." (Laughter) So I let it go (unintelligible) with that. But I kind of think from guys that were in the Army days that I did talk this way.
Tavis: Okay. So you've always had that raspy voice. Secondly, have you always been such a natty dresser? You are one of the best-dressed men in Congress. On the cover of this book, indeed what you have on now. You obviously take pride in what you put on every day.
Rangel: Yeah, I like to hear that from a guy like you. You just tell me - I wish I could afford your tailor. (Laughter)
Tavis: Not hardly. But did you like clothes as a kid?
Rangel: I really did, but I was torn between being raggedy and getting dressed up. It was almost like my grandfather. He had a set of clothes in the attic that would make you think that he was Beau Brummel. But most all the time, after he retired, he wore overalls. And so it was just a question - I guess what you said, I always liked my Sunday clothes.
Tavis: All right, so I've got my silly stuff out the way. But I just wanted to know the answers to those two questions. The third question I wanted to ask is, "And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since." It's a great title. It comes from where?
Rangel: Well, I guess it comes from everybody having a bad time, and they've been able to say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa." But my bad time came is when things were going rough for me on the streets and I dropped out of high school, and when the Army looked like the only alternative, as it does for so many youngsters today, I grabbed it and ran with it.
It took me to Ft. Lewis, Washington in 1948, and then again in 1950 we received orders the second infantry division, that we were to go to repel the Communist North Koreans that had invaded South Korea. So away we went, and I went there and we fulfilled our mission. We pushed the North Koreans to the northern border, which was separated from China by the Yellow River.
As far as I was concerned, it was all over. What I did not know was the Chinese had dug in, completely surrounded my division and the Eighth Army, and for three days taunted us with bullhorns and (unintelligible) that we shouldn't be there, the Blacks should be back home, that it was racist and it was 20 below zero and that we couldn't go to the resorts in the south.
In any event, we were scared to death before they hit, and when they did hit, tens of thousands with horses and bugles, then it was nothing but a massacre. And I can understand how General Custer felt as I saw people being killed, people being carried away, the moaning, the groaning, the crying, the prisoners of war. And I got shot and was there in a gully.
And I had given up, really, on life. But I just took a shot at Jesus and said if he got me out of this, "You'll have no trouble with Charlie Rangel ever again." And so my whole life - I got out of that with a chest full of medals and got about 43 people out - but the most important thing is that no matter what I faced, and I did have a lot of obstacles, I managed to remember that promise.
Not so much because I didn't want to break it, but it reminded me of where I had been and the fact of how lucky I was that I was just alive to be able to deal with any new challenges.
Tavis: And you haven't had a bad day since.
Rangel: Not a bad day, and I really believe in listening to other peoples' story that when you do have a problem, and you're able to tackle it in a positive way, you can do a heck of a lot better than if you just think about that problem being the worst thing that ever happened to you or anybody.
Tavis: Let me ask you right quick, to the taunting that you took as an African American, back then ya'll were Negro soldiers, colored soldiers back then. Let me ask you how you, in fact, did juxtapose fighting for this country - a country at the same time that was practicing segregation - you couldn't get respected as a Black man when you came back home, so how did you juxtapose, how did you navigate fighting on behalf of this country?
Rangel: Well first of all, it's much like those that went to Vietnam and those that find themselves in Iraq. You're fighting because you're told to fight, you're fighting because you got a contract, you're fighting because you have no options. And quite frankly, there's very little patriotism when you can't even explain what the hell you were doing there.
When I was sent there, I had no clue as to where Korea was. And when they told me it was a police action, I thought it was an extension of some law enforcement agency. I did not know until we got on that boat that we were going to be fighting people with rifles. And so, I was responsible for the Tuskegee airmen, to be able to get a gold medal and recognition by the Congress and the president.
And if you think I had a time understanding it, or those in Iraq who are minorities, imagine what happens when you're told you can't fight, you can't learn, you come out as aces and heroes in the entire World War II, then go to Georgia and find out that the German prisoners of war are treated better than you are. I think that we made a lot of advancements, but the depth of racism and the stigmas that its caused Black folks to carry are things that you don't get over easily. And we got so far to go. A lot of the prejudice is being transferred to Mexicans, but we're on that list no matter how long we've been here.
Tavis: Let me jump ahead here in the time I have left right quick, cover some more ground in this memoir that you've shared with us. You mentioned earlier you were a high school dropout, and yet you end up going back to school, getting your college degree, and for that matter going on to law school and getting a law degree.
And with all the talk of late about these wrongly-fired U.S. attorneys, at one point - a funny story, I think, in the book. You were up to be a U.S. attorney and it must have scared the dickens out of you, given the trouble you'd been in in your younger years, yes?
Rangel: I had a judge who was - I didn't know any Black big shots. I didn't know any White big shots. But there was a Jewish guy in my class named Ned Frank, and I used to study with him. His father was a judge. He agreed to put his name down as a reference for the FBI check. I had no one except a number runner that I knew that was considered in my neighborhood as a big shot.
And so when he called and told me I was having a problem with the FBI, I expected it. But when he told me it was where I lived, I just knew that wasn't right. So I came back to the neighborhood that afternoon with a heavy heart, not knowing what had gone wrong. When they boys on the block were there waiting for me asked "What the hell are you doing here? The FBI's been looking for you for two weeks." (Laughter)
And everybody said, "We don't know who you are. We've knocked on every door in the neighborhood." And so I had to go and knock on those doors and say hey, they're with me this time. (Laughter)
Tavis: All right, so you end up doing your legal thing, and of course we know, as I mentioned earlier, in 1970 you are elected to Congress. Now, I say this with all due respect and with love, but you have been in Congress for so long now that a lot of folk have forgotten - and certainly many of the younger folk watching this program do not know that the way you got to Congress was to defeat one who was an icon in Black history named Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. How did that happen?
Rangel: Well, first of all, I was one of Adam's biggest supporters. And even when he was in trouble in our neighborhood, they would do something stupid in Washington to cause all of us to rally behind Adam, who was probably the most articulate and most effective legislator we've had. And the only reason they knew the state legislator is that when White folk would condemn us for continuously electing him, I'd be on television saying, "Know who your congressperson is, and leave us alone with ours."
But when Adam just went to Bimini after we - I was one of the petitioners that in a Supreme Court case - and just didn't come home at all, I told Governor Rockefeller he ought to take away this arrest warrant that he had for nonpayment of a court thing, and the governor told me that he wanted Adam back, "Go tell him to come back."
I went to Bimini and talked with Adam, and after a lot (laughs) of humiliation and embarrassment, I came back convinced that if I didn't run against Adam, Adam was gonna get beaten and I could be beaten just for defending Adam. So he was not a great challenge. He came home, but he had been away a long, long time in Bimini. So during the campaign I never said I ran against Adam Powell. I said I was running for that empty seat, because Adam really quit.
Tavis: So you ended up taking over the seat once held, again, by this powerful icon, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and I know that you must pinch yourself sometimes now, when you consider that given this last election you've now risen to be the chair of the most powerful committee in the House. How do you read that, in your lifetime?
Rangel: Well, to be honest with you, it may sound corny but I've had such a good run in the Congress, and to see what Bush and the Republicans was doing in terms of the Constitution, invasion of our privacy, a war that history is going to determine has been one of the most immoral acts that any country has ever committed, I just was scared to death that someone may ask me, later in my life - maybe someone like you - "What were you doing all of the time that this was happening to your country and to your Congress?"
And I was frightened and said I may not even run - probably would not run for reelection because I would say I couldn't do anything. And the next question would have stunned me if they asked, "Well, if you couldn't do anything, why did you stay in the Congress?" So I am more happy that we've turned this around, we've taken a new look at oversight and stopping this war.
As chairman of the Ways and Means committee, I have committed and I've shared it with the Congress and the world that poverty and lack of education is a threat to our national security. My first hearing was on poverty, and Katrina's just an example of what can happen in terms of a terrorist attack. People died there because they were poor and uneducated.
And I think in the long run, as long as we're dealing with taxes and people who want tax incentives, if they don't deal with education and health in this country, there won't be a country for us to be competitive with.
Tavis: He's gone from the streets of Harlem to the halls of Congress. Now the chair of the House Ways and Means committee, his new memoir is called "And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since." He is, of course, the Democrat from New York, Charles Rangel. Mr. Chairman, nice to have you on the program. Congrats on the book, and thanks for your insight.
Rangel: I'll write another one if you let me back on the program.
Tavis: You don't have to do that. You're the chairman of the House Ways and Means committee. (Laughter) You can come on whenever you want to, sir.
Rangel: (Laughs) Okay, Tavis.
Tavis: Nice to have you on.
Back to April 10, 2007