Bill Perkins, a force in Harlem politics, is dead at 74; ‘Harlem has lost a giant,’ says Mayor Adams

Bill Perkins, a hard-charging, reform-minded city and state lawmaker who championed equality in health care and criminal justice as an energetic force in Harlem politics across three decades, died Monday night in his home. He was 74.

“Harlem has lost a giant,” Mayor Adams tweeted Tuesday. “Bill Perkins was a legend of New York government. He was also a good friend. I will miss his company and his counsel.”

As he rose in politics, Perkins emerged as an outspoken progressive — a supporter of the Central Park 5, an early voice against the Iraq War and a backer of LGBTQ rights. He had an acute focus on health care, and was a leading voice in the passage of lead-paint inspection laws.

His death was announced Tuesday by his wife, Pamela Green Perkins.

“After a lifetime fighting for justice, equality and to make the voices of our community heard, my husband, former City Councilman and State Senator Perkins died at home in Harlem, the community he loved and fought for his entire life,” she said in a statement. “May he rest in peace and in power.”

The cause was not immediately clear. But Perkins had suffered from dementia in recent years, said Richard Fife, a spokesman for his family.

On Twitter, Gov. Hochul saluted Perkins as a “fierce advocate for justice and a steadfast voice for his community throughout his career.”

The Bronx-born Perkins, a graduate of Brown University, worked as a social worker and tenant advocate before his initial election to the City Council in 1997. The Democrat served for seven years in the Council, went to work as a state senator in Albany for a decade, and then returned for four more years in the Council.

Perkins’ priorities included public education, rat eradication, lead regulation, criminal justice reform and increases to the minimum wage.

Perkins counted mayors David Dinkins and Eric Adams as friends. In 2007, Perkins was the first New York politician to support the presidential run of Barack Obama. He lost his Council seat to Kristin Richardson Jordan in the 2021 Democratic primary as he struggled with his health in the final years of his political career.

Former Rep. Charles Rangel, Harlem’s longtime voice in Congress, said in a phone call that Perkins started as a “young maverick” fighting the political power structure and blossomed into a “great public official.”

“He was a hardworking official, and he served this community well,” Rangel said. “It didn’t mean he agreed with everybody, but he always had the people first in his thoughts.”

“He will be missed by all of us who knew and worked with him,” Rangel added.

As a younger man, Perkins served as deputy majority leader of the City Council.

He was arrested protesting the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed street peddler from West Africa who died in a hail of 41 bullets fired by four plainclothes police officers.

He was also an outspoken defender of the Central Park 5, who were eventually cleared after being wrongfully convicted of raping a white woman in Central Park in 1989.

Yusef Salaam, a member of the Central Park 5 who is now running for Council in Harlem, said in a statement that he would “always be grateful” for Perkins. “In our darkest hours, when it seemed like the whole world was against us, Bill Perkins bravely stood behind and with us,” Salaam said in the statement.

Perkins also sponsored the Childhood Lead Paint Poisoning Prevention Act of 2004, a law forcing landlords to fix paint hazards in apartments.

As a senator in Albany, Perkins led a push to require reductions in sulfur in heating oil, a bid to reduce the risks of acid rain. He often fixed his focus on the health of New Yorkers, and pushed for more cancer screenings.

“Health care is a great, great problem,” Perkins said in a 2005 interview with the City University of New York. “There are serious health disparities in our city.”

And long before Adams made killing rats a cornerstone of his administration, Perkins was a vocal vermin denigrator. He led legislation aimed at banning eating on the subways.

The Washington Post called him “The Rat Man.”

“I know cultures where they don’t abhor the rat; there are places where they worship the rat,” Perkins told MetroFocus in 2012. “That’s not New York, and that’s not me!”

Perkins was born in the South Bronx on April 18, 1949, and was raised with two brothers and a cousin by his mother. He studied at the Collegiate School before heading to college at Brown in Rhode Island.

He described himself as a child of the civil rights movement. After returning to New York, he created the Sojourner Truth Democratic Club as a headquarters for his community work.

Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a Manhattan Democrat, said in a statement that Perkins “showed courage during difficult times and was a fearless advocate for the vulnerable.”

“He treated all with the respect, equity and justice that they deserved,” Espaillat added, “and he demanded change when and where it was needed the most.”