Bill Perkins was remembered Tuesday as a giant of Harlem.

And his death mourned ahead of a competitive primary for the City Council post he twice held.

What You Need To Know

  • Bill Perkins, a lifelong resident of Harlem who served in different offices has died at 74, his wife Pamela Green Perkins said Tuesday
  • Perkins had served Harlem as a City Councilmember and state senator

  • Kristin Richardson Jordan, who had unseated him, will serve 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 in the City Council

Perkins died at age 74 at his home in what his wife described as “the community he loved and fought for his entire life.”

The progressive champion had served in the City Council, then as a state senator before returning to City Council.

“And I’m excited about the potential of what we’re going to be able to do for the people of the city of New York,” Perkins told NY1 in 2017.

Perkins’ finals years were marked by health struggles.

News of his passing happened to come on the same day that Kristin Richardson Jordan – who unseated Perkins two years ago by a razor-thin margin – announced she won’t seek re-election.

“Thank you for seeing the true possibility for radical love in the loveless land of politics,” Richardson Jordan posted to her supporters on Instagram.

Richardson Jordan had been a fierce critic of police tactics, and she said Tuesday that she would keep up her fight for “economic justice, abolition, liberation and radical societal change.”

Three Democrats remain in the race for City Council, some applauding Richardson Jordan’s service.

“We need women of color in rooms where decisions about our lives are being made,” State Assemblywoman Inez Dickens, the primary’s fundraising leader, said in a statement.

Dickens added separately of Perkins’ death that Harlem had lost a “great warrior.”

Also on the ballot is Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Exonerated Five.

“What I represent in this race is something different, something unique,” Salaam told NY1. “That uniqueness is that I’m not beholden to the same political machinery.”

Perkins had defended the young men wrongly accused of rape from the start.

“Of course, he stood with us in our darkest hours,” Salaam said. “I was 15 years old.”

Also competing is Al Taylor, a state assemblyman whose district stretches into Washington Heights and Inwood.

The three will face off in a ranked-choice primary set for June 27.