Bill Perkins was remembered Tuesday as a Harlem giant.
And his death was mourned before a competitive primary for the City Council position he held twice.
What you need to know
Bill Perkins, a lifelong Harlem resident who served in various offices, has died at age 74, his wife Pamela Green Perkins said Tuesday. Perkins had served Harlem as a city councilman and state senator.
Kristin Richardson Jordan, who had unseated him, will serve out the remainder of her term but will not seek another re-election. Inez Dickens, Al Taylor and Yusef Salaam remain in the competitive race to represent Harlem on City Council.
Perkins died at age 74 at his home in what his wife described as “the community he loved and fought for all his life.”
The progressive champion had served on the City Council, then as a state senator before returning to the City Council.
“And I’m excited about the potential of what we’re going to be able to do for the people of New York City,” Perkins told NY1 in 2017.
Perkins’ last years were marked by health struggles.
News of his death came the same day Kristin Richardson Jordan, who unseated Perkins by a razor-thin margin two years ago, announced she would not seek re-election.
“Thank you for seeing the true possibility of radical love in the loveless land of politics,” Richardson Jordan posted to his followers on Instagram.
Richardson Jordan had been a fierce critic of police tactics and said Tuesday he would continue his fight for “economic justice, abolition, liberation and radical social change.”
Three Democrats remain in the City Council race, some applauding Richardson Jordan’s service.
“We need women of color in the halls where decisions about our lives are made,” state Rep. Inez Dickens, a leading primary fundraiser, said in a statement.
Dickens added separately from Perkins’ death that Harlem had lost a “great warrior”.
Also on the ballot is Yusef Salaam, one of Central Park’s Exonerated Five.
“What I represent in this race is something different, something unique,” Salaam told NY1. “That uniqueness is that I’m not bound to the same political machinery.”
Perkins had defended young men wrongfully accused of rape from the beginning.
“Of course, he was with us in our darkest hours,” Salaam said. “I was 15 years old.”
Also running is Al Taylor, a state Rep. whose district spans Washington Heights and Inwood.
The three will face each other in a classified election primary for June 27.
