Harlem voter advocate Bill Perkins dies at age 74

Bill Perkins, who spent 24 years as a Harlem legislator championing his community—including challenging Donald J. Trump’s aggressive demand for the death penalty when five teens, later acquitted, were arrested in connection with a rape in Central Park in 1989 – died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He turned 74.

His death was announced by his wife, Pamela Green Perkins. She gave no cause, but Mr. Perkins had been undergoing treatment for colon cancer and had developed dementia, according to Richard Fife, a spokesperson for the family.

Raised with his brothers and a cousin by a single mother, Mr. Perkins was a relentless advocate on the New York City Council and New York State Senate for raising the minimum wage, protecting children from lead paint poisoning in their apartments, the establishment of health screening programs in municipal hospitals and the protection of the rights of gay, lesbian and transgender people.

In 1989, when five black and Hispanic teenagers were charged with the rape of a white jogger in Central Park, Mr. Perkins was one of the first black civic leaders to publicly question the evidence and suggest that a rush had been made to a to pass judgement. . At the time, he was president of the tenants’ association of Schomburg Plaza, the Manhattan apartment complex where several defendants lived.

Few other government officials or civic leaders, white or black, questioned the police investigation at the time, especially since the defendants had confessed.

Mr. Perkins also took on Mr. Trump, then a wealthy real estate developer, who ran full-page ads in city newspapers after the attack calling for New York state to introduce the death penalty for murder. Mr. Trump did not explicitly call for the death penalty for the five defendants, but he made it clear that he was referring to that case.

“This took a while, a very unfortunate and you could say racially tense moment in our city, and fed a lynch mob,” Mr. Perkins said when Mr. Trump ran for president in 2016.

The defendants, who became known as the Central Park Five, were convicted and imprisoned. But they were acquitted in 2002 after another man confessed to the crime.

“In our darkest hours, when it seemed like the whole world was against us, Bill Perkins stood bravely behind and beside us,” one of the defendants, Yusef Salaam, said in a statement following Mr Perkins’ death. “His courage and commitment to justice were unwavering, and he is a major reason why we were ultimately acquitted.”

William Morris Perkins was born on April 18, 1949 in the Bronx to Helen Perkins. He said he never knew his father.

Inspired by his mother’s belief in education, he won scholarships to the Collegiate School in Manhattan and Brown University in Providence, RI, graduating in 1972 with a bachelor’s degree.

He was a community organizer, social worker, and tenant leader before running for city council. He served there from 1997 to 2006 and again from 2017 to 2021, eventually rising to deputy majority leader. From 2007 to 2017, he served as a senator representing Harlem, the Upper West Side, and Washington Heights.

One of his most significant accomplishments was sponsoring the Childhood Lead Paint Poisoning Prevention Act of 2004, which required landlords to improve hazardous paint conditions on their properties.

The Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez wrote of Mr. Perkins, who was a marathon runner, “It took the stamina of a long-distance runner to prevail against the city’s powerful landlord lobby, which has opposed stricter lead paint removal laws for decades.”

Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the Senate Majority Leader, said in a statement after Perkins’s death that he “never waited for the right thing to get popular before taking action.”

He had no qualms about challenging Khalid Abdul Muhammad, a Nation of Islam minister known for his anti-white diatribes. And in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign, when Senator Hillary Clinton of New York was in office, he was one of the first black elected officials to support Barack Obama.

In 2021, already ill, he lost a primary to retain his council seat.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Perkins is survived by his children, Kiva Perkins-Watts, Medjha White, William Perkins, Margaret Perkins, Maximilian Perkins, and Rebecca Miramutu; his brothers, Gerry, Richard and Michael; and four grandchildren.