Charles Rangel is being stalked by history.

Once upon a time, 40 years ago, a middle-aged Harlem lawyer went up against a lion of Black politics by the name of Adam Clayton Powell.

Powell, the Old Man - forced out of the chairmanship of the House Education and Labor Committee, one of the most powerful posts in Washington - had been done in by his own ethical problems and personal excesses, the argument went. Time for a new generation to take power with a clean slate in a new decade.

Powell vs. Rangel represented the powerful but corrupt past versus an uncertain future. The Old Man, known mostly on the street by his first name, was consumed by time and his mistakes, and Rangel, a former State Assemblyman, became Harlem's Congressman. Rangel and his buddies - Percy Sutton, Basil Paterson and David Dinkins - became known as The Harlem Mafia or the Gang of Four.

This Mafia grew in stature as well as power: Dinkins became New York City's first black mayor and Patterson had a son who is now New York State's first black governor.

But now the spirits have moved the wind. Rangel - forced out of chairing the Ways and Means Committee, one of the most powerful roles in Washington - is now the Old Man and he is being challenged by Adam Clayton Powell IV, the Old Man's youngest son. Powell, a state assemblyman who unsuccessfully tried to unseat Rangel in 1994, is asking for a new day for a new Harlem.

Old Harlem isn't buckling under the strain, since Rangel represents the Black uptown mafia past that is slipping away, not-so-slowly morphing into a white, gentrified upscale neighborhood. Old and New Harlem will vote on September 14th, Primary Day.

While the voting booth looms, Rangel is awaiting a House ethics committee report to be issued on Thursday. The charges include not paying taxes on a Dominican Republic villa, using four rent-controlled apartments for office space and creating a loophole for an oil executive who, in turn, helped fund the Rangel Center at City College of New York. These and other problems forced his ouster from the committee he waited decades to chair.

Rangel, known mostly on the street by his first name, has vowed to publicly fight this, even if it helps destroy his party's chances to keep the majority they have in the House. But deals can be cut very quickly in politics, and Rangel, as the dean of the New York delegation and, unofficially, the dean of Black politicos, is nothing if not an old pol.

How did this happen?

The same way it always does: Politician gains power. Politician does good. Decades go by. Politician decides that his doing good means he can also do well. Politician decides he has achieved enough power and done enough good to do whatever he wants to do. Politician goes down, and new politician gains power and does good, and then....

Ancestor John Henrik Clarke, a great historian of Harlem (and of Africa, and of...) liked to say that to understand Adam Clayton Powell you needed a small child and a very old man because the small child would blurt out that the emperor had no clothes and the very old man would agree, but explain that he once had clothes and that they were beautiful.

Fast-forward, re-wind, repeat.

Rangel vs. Powell. The powerful but corrupt past versus an uncertain future.

Perhaps it's not history that's stalking Rangel, but a ghost, demanding revenge through the Congress and the son, like some African version of Hamlet performed on the Harlem stage during a long-ago Renaissance.


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Todd Steven Burroughs is co-author with Herb Boyd of the forthcoming book "Civil Rights, Yesterday and Today."