The Queen of Soul and lifelong civil-rights activist Aretha Franklin will be buried next to her preacher dad, brother and two sisters in her beloved hometown of Detroit following a celebration of her life.

Franklin, who was born in Memphis in 1942, had a career that spanned seven decades. She died of pancreatic cancer on August 14 at the age of 76.

A private funeral service will be held on August 31 at the Greater Grace Temple, before she is laid to rest at Woodlawn Cemetery, where her father, Rev. C. L. Franklin, sisters Carolyn and Erma, brother Cecil and nephew Thomas are also resting.

A young Aretha was subjected to racism at an early age, which forced her to stand up for her rights. She decreed in her contracts that she would never play to segregated audiences and lived by that rule even when little gigs were coming in.

The second of five children, her family moved to Buffalo, N.Y., and then Detroit, where her parents divorced. Her mother died when she was 10, and because of her father’s travels, she was reared by her grandmother.

As a teen, Franklin was a soloist in her father’s church and began recording gospel songs. She dropped out of high school and toured the gospel circuit, singing in churches around the country. It was a hard life during which she learned firsthand about racism while traveling the back roads of the South.

Her talents led her winning 18 Grammy Awards selected from 112 charted singles on Billboard; including 77 Hot 100 entries, 17 top-ten pop singles, 100 Rhythm and Blues entries and 20 number-one R&B singles.

The accolades led to her becoming the first female artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. Along the way she influenced countless singers including Whitney Houston, Patti LaBelle, Natalie Cole, Chaka Khan, Mariah Carey, Luther Vandross, Jennifer Hudson and Fantasia.

She at one time famously brought tears to the eyes of former U.S. President Barack Obama in one of the renditions of her hits, which included: “Respect, Think, I Say A Little Prayer and Chain Of Fools.”

Franklin was there when times were tough and Blacks in the U.S. were enslaved by racism. She used her talents and funds to help Black causes and for racial equality.

She was beside the coffin of family friend King Jr., where her touching rendition of his favourite “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” left many weeping at his packed 1968 funeral services following his assassination.

Franklin also performed at the funeral services of civil-rights icon Rosa Parks, who in 1955 refused to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. It led to a city-wide bus boycott by Blacks in that city.

She also sang at the 1972 funeral services of fellow activist and gospel great Mahalia Jackson, who recorded more than 30 albums and had a dozen million-sellers.

A few weeks after the King funeral, Franklin became only the second African-American woman to appear on the cover of Time magazine.

By then she had collaborated with Ray Charles, covered Simon & Garfunkel and the Beatles, revisited jazz on “Soul ’69,” and recorded the gospel album “Amazing Grace.” It was during this period that she would appear in African garb, a woman consciously representing her community, gender and beliefs with empowering self-confidence that resonated with generations of oppressed minorities.

Her career was derailed by the onset of the disco era in the ’70s and then by the shooting of her father in an attempted robbery in 1979. He spent five years in a coma before dying.

However, it was a cameo with Canadian comedians Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi in the “The Blues Brothers” movie, which resurrected her career with a top single and album “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism.”

Even with her enormous talents and millions of records sold, Franklin was never able to earn the huge sums paid to female white entertainers as Barbra Streisand, Madonna or even Adele, according to Forbes magazine.

The singers’ lesser income was partially due to Franklin’s fear of travelling by airplane and that she performed at smaller North American venues that were accessible by bus.

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Many of us had never heard of District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan until he famously ordered the U.S. government to turn around in mid-air a jet deporting a mother and daughter and return them to the States for a proper hearing.

Sullivan, 71, is being considered a hero for ordering a plane deporting the two asylum seekers to El Salvador to turn around and return them to the U.S., so they can have a fair and impartial immigration hearing.

The well-respected Sullivan then blocked the Trump Administration from deporting the two, and other asylum seekers, before they can receive proper hearings to stay in the U.S.

A frustrated Sullivan was hearing an emergency petition last week by the American Civil Liberties Union that the immigrants they are representing in a federal lawsuit should not be deported while their cases are pending.

The hearing turned dramatic when attorneys discovered that two of their clients, a mom and daughter, were put on a plane to El Salvador. Court was assured the asylum seekers would be available, instead they were quietly placed on a flight home.

The mother, known in court documents as Carmen to protect her identity, and her daughter were challenging Trump Administration rules that bar the use of domestic and gang violence as the basis for asylum applications.

“Oh, I want those people brought back forthwith. … I’m not asking, I’m ordering,” Sullivan said in his Washington, D.C. courtroom after learning what had happened.

The D.C.-native said he was “directing the government to turn that plane around either now or when it lands, turn that plane around and bring those people back to the United States. It’s outrageous.”

He then threatened to issue U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions with a contempt-of-court order, saying if the immigrants weren’t returned he was going to order officials to explain “why people should not be held in contempt of court, and I’m going to start with the Attorney General.”

“I know I’m raising my voice, but I’m extremely upset about this,” the experienced judge snapped. “This is not acceptable.”

He continued with the hearing but kept reflecting on how he was “really upset” and found it “pretty outrageous” that “somebody in the pursuit of justice … is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her.”

The young girl was among 2,551 children, who were separated from their parents at border crossings. Of those, 559 are still apart from their parents and 386 have been deported, according to U.S. border officials, who have lost track of the deported parents of 26 separated kids.

The plane was not able to turn around in mid-flight, but a Department of Homeland Security official said the mother and daughter did not disembark in El Salvador and were returned to the U.S.

According to their lawsuit, Carmen and her young daughter came to the U.S. from El Salvador after “two decades of horrific sexual abuse by her husband and death threats from a violent gang.

But at the U.S. border, the government determined after interviewing her that she did not meet the “credible fear” threshold required to pursue an asylum claim in the U.S., and an immigration judge upheld that decision.

Sullivan was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in October 1984. He was appointed in November 1991 by President George H. W. Bush to serve as an Associate Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

He was nominated by President Bill Clinton in March 1994 to a seat on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and was confirmed by the Senate in June 1994.

Not one to back down from controversy. In 2015 Sullivan presided over a Freedom of Information lawsuit involving the use of Hillary Clinton’s private email while she was the Secretary of State.

He was also involved in a high-profile case involving United States of America v. Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser to Donald J. Trump, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

– 30 –

A campaign has been resurrected by a Halifax senator and a number of Black communities to have the federal government declare August 1 as Emancipation Day to mark the end of slavery in Canada.

Blacks in Toronto and other cities have banded with those in Owen Sound, who are marking the 156^th anniversary of the end of slavery, with calls for a federally-recognized national day so Canadians can learn more about their history.

There were bands, shows, exhibits and food as thousands attended the 156^th Owen Sound Emancipation Festival last weekend. Owen Sound was the most northerly stop of the Underground Railroad and was used as a safe haven for hundreds of U.S. slaves who were smuggled to Canada to escape a life of forced servitude.

“Owen Sound was the most northerly retreat of the Underground Railroad journey in Canada” according to festival organizers. “Every year descendants of Blacks, who came via the Underground Railroad to settle in freedom, gather to reminisce and enjoy a time of fellowship.”

The festival has been taking place every August long weekend since 1862. It falls around the same time as the Toronto Caribbean Carnival, which marked its 51^st anniversary last weekend with more than 1 million visitors.

In Toronto, more than 1,000 supporters attended the 6^th Annual Emancipation Day Underground Freedom Train ride on a packed but private TTC subway car that travelled just before midnight from Union Station to Sheppard Ave. W., where they were met with entertainment.

There were speeches, readings and a tribute to the late Judge George Carter, the first Black Canadian-born judge in the country. He would have been 97 last week.

Well-wishers were also treated to a preview screening of an upcoming Marcus Garvey film by well-known Toronto director, Roy Anderson.

Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard, who has been visiting some of the Emancipation Day festivities, said there should be a day set aside to recognize Emancipation Day in Canada.

Bernard promised a vocal gathering that she will continue the work to help make an annual Emancipation Day a federally-proclaimed national day.

“Today is a very special day,” she said. “On August 1st, 1834 the Act for the Abolition of Slavery in the British Colonies took effect, which freed more than 800,000 enslaved Africans.”

We are pleased that Upper Canada, now Ontario, was the first colony in the British Empire to abolish slavery.

John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, from 1791 to 1796, passed an Act Against Slavery in 1793, which led to the abolition of slavery in Upper Canada by 1810. It was superseded by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which took affect in 1834.

Simcoe was drawn to the plight of slaves after being told of the escape of Chloe Cooley, an enslaved Black woman in Upper Canada, who, in March 1793 was bound and thrown into a boat to be sold in the U.S. Witnesses saw what happened and relayed the incident to a concerned Simcoe.

He was moved to pass new legislation called ‘Act to Prevent the further Introduction of Slaves and to limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude’ or the ‘Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada’ in July of that year.

It was one of the first pieces of legislation aiming at prohibiting slavery in North America. The Act outlawed purchase of new slaves and freed the children of slaves when they reached 21 years old.

Passage of the act freed nearly one-million slaves in Canada, including those in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados and other Caribbean countries as well as South Africa.

A petition was presented last year by the Ontario Black History Society to the federal government to officially declare an Emancipation Day. There has been no response from the feds.

– 30 –

The late and iconic anti-apartheid champion Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela loved Toronto and its residents, who last week returned their love for the late South African president by celebrating his life and 100-years since his birth.

Downtown’s Yonge and Dundas Square was filled with well-wishers last weekend who showed up to remember the famed leader, who visited our city attracting huge crowds in 1990, 1998 and 2001.
Madiba, as he was affectionately called, first visited and fell in love with Canada in 1990, just four months after being freed from a South African jail. He said he was deeply moved to be in a place where, unlike apartheid South Africa, people were free to determine their destiny.

While here, he addressed the joint Houses of Parliament; became the first foreign leader awarded the Order of Canada; an honorary Canadian citizenship and to be greeted by 45,000 screaming Toronto students to launch the Canadian Friends of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.
Thousands of residents lined the streets of Toronto to see the former President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999 on his visits. People of all ages, races and backgrounds reacted with a joyful outpouring of affection and respect as they waited.
The appreciative city in return dedicated a section of University Ave., from City Hall to Queen’s Park, as Nelson Mandela Boulevard in 2015. The naming stemmed from a visit, when a huge march was held on the University Ave. where Mandela gave a speech attended by tens of thousands of people.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner remembered many of us by face and was always willing to give his support or advice on issues affecting the Black community.
Mandela praised Canada for supporting the anti-apartheid movement and had asked the government not to lift trade sanctions on South Africa, a request then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney proudly obliged.

The ‘father of South Africa’ would have been proud of a rousing speech to 15,000 people by former U.S. president Barack Obama at the Wanderers cricket stadium in Johannesburg last July 17 to mark Nelson Mandela International Day 2018 and 100-years of his birth.
Obama said Madiba’s light shone brightly “even from that narrow Robben Island cell” and forced him as a young college student to re-examine his priorities and “consider the small role I might play in bending the arc of the world towards justice.”
‘’He came to embody the universal aspirations of dispossessed people all around the world, their hopes for a better life, the possibility of a moral transformation in the conduct of human affairs,” the 44th U.S. President told a cheering crowd.
‘’The man went to prison for almost three decades. He split limestone in the heat, he slept in a small cell, and was repeatedly put in solitary confinement,’’ he warned.
Before arriving in South Africa, Obama paid a brief visit to Kenya, his father’s home country. There, he opened a youth centre run by his half-sister and visited the home of his step-grandmother in the village of Kogelo, where his father was born and was buried.

Mandela was imprisoned under apartheid rule in 1962 for fighting for freedom against the white-dominated apartheid government of South Africa. He was freed in 1990 due to mounting pressure from the international community.
He was incarcerated for 27 years with several comrades for the struggle against apartheid on the infamous Robben Island prison off the coast of Cape Town. He won the heart of the world and symbolized the triumph of the human spirit following his release from Pollsmoor Prison.
Millions of people from around the world watched his emotional release from prison, which was broadcasted live on television. He was elected president of South Africa in 1994 and humbly chose the path of reconciliation and restitution instead of revenge.
Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 with former South African president F.W. de Klerk, who helped to end the dehumanizing apartheid system, which required Blacks to have ‘pass books’ and was in place from 1948 to the early 1990s.
Mandela passed away in 2013 and was given a heroic, televised state funeral.

– 30 –

Wrestler Reginald Siki was the dirt-poor son of a Texas sharecropper who moved to Toronto, where he dyed his hair blonde and changed his name to Sweet Daddy Siki to become a fan favourite who packed Maple Leaf Gardens for years.

Busloads of fans would jam the Gardens every weekend to moan over the latest antics of the popular and well-liked Siki, or to see him get pounded by an irate opponent. He was a main card attraction who made his debut in 1962 and wrestled at the Carlton St. shrine until 1980.
Siki, who was born in 1940 in Montgomery, Texas, began learning the ropes at Compton College in Los Angeles. By the 1950s, he was fighting in New Mexico.
He is called the “Jackie Robinson of professional wrestling” for facing intense discrimination in the U.S. south, where he was once forced to fight in front of the KKK.
Having suffered enough racism, he and his late long-time Canadian wife moved to Toronto in 1961. He fought in venues across the country and was a fixture at Stampede Wrestling for years.

A large man, with a soft voice, Siki was best-known for his unique moves that included the “coco butt, airplane spin and neck-breaker,” which had rivals in pain on the mat.
Siki was a pioneer, who had grown more popular than the headline fighters, as Whipper Billy Watson, Gene “Big Thunder” Kiniski, Abdullah The Butcher, Dick “The Bulldog” Brower and Lord Athol Layton.
‘Mr. Irresistible’, as he was dubbed by fans, Siki was then earning a whopping $3,000 a bout and was receiving bundles of mail from fans around the world.
He brought sizzle and glamour to the ring and many fans booed as Siki would take out his white hand-held mirrors and begin admiring his good looks and well-built body.
“He was a Black wrestler who had a gimmick that wasn’t rooted in his colour,” one magazine said. “He didn’t want you to hate him because he was Black. You were supposed to hate him because he was a vain, rude, arrogant prima donna.”
In a time when ring attire consisted of solid colour trunks and black boots, Siki’s were candy-striped. His boots were white, with the backs cut out to show off his calf muscles. With bleached hair and mustache, he wore sequined robes and Jackie Kennedy sunglasses on his way to the ring.
“I saw my first wrestling match at the age of 14, and I knew right then that is what I wanted to do,” recalled Siki, who was at one time a corporal in the U.S. Army.

He was a regular fixture in the Parkdale area, where he lived and for years drove around in a converted hearse. Along the way, Siki has earned six major wrestling belts, including the Austria-Asian championship, the North American championship, which he held for three years; the Texas championship and the tag-team heavyweight crown.
His body has suffered a tremendous toll from the sport. His injuries included two broken ribs, his hands were broken twice, his ankle and leg broken and half-his-face paralyzed, after being kicked in the face.
To this day fans still recall his signature phrases: “I’m the Women’s Pet and the Man’s Regret” and “A lot of people try to copy me, but there’s only one Niagara Falls and only one Mona Lisa. And there’s only one Mr. Irresistible”.
Siki has mentored and influenced today’s top stars, including Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Adam “Edge” Copeland, Bret “The Hitman” Hart and Trish Stratus.
Today, the 78-year-old has slowed down a little. He still trains the next wave of professional wrestlers and hosts karaoke events at area clubs.
He remains secluded and friends say he isn’t feeling well these days to talk.
A documentary called Sweet Daddy Siki was aired by the CBC’s Documentary Channel on June 11, 2017.

– 30 –

The public is invited to the unveiling of Charley Roach Lane in west-end Toronto on July 18 at 7 p.m.

It took 60 years and many supporters before a deserving Willie O’Ree was finally made a member of the iconic Hockey Hall of Fame.

It was in 1958 when O’Ree valiantly stepped on the ice and stick-handled his way into becoming the first Black player to ever play in the National Hockey League.
O’Ree, now 82, is often dubbed the “Jackie Robinson of hockey.” He is still very active and serves as a NHL diversity ambassador.
He was inducted last month into the cherished hall in the builders’ category and becomes the third Black person to make it to the top of the sport. O’Ree joins Edmonton Oilers goalie Grant Fuhr and Canadian women’s national team captain Angela James.
There are now about two dozen Black players on NHL rosters.
The partially-blind O’Ree has been instrumental the NHL’s Hockey is for Everyone program that introduces the game to children that might not normally see a path in the sport. The league even established the Willie O’Ree Community Hero Award last season.

“There’s not enough words to say how pleased I am. I was laughing and I was crying,” an ecstatic O’Ree told the Toronto Star after the induction. “I’m just so happy that I’m alive to be able to share this.
He was also honoured by the Boston Bruins last January 17 to mark the 60th anniversary of when he took to the ice for the team to become the league’s first Black player.
His first game with Boston resulted in a 3-0 win against the Montreal Canadiens. He recalled that he didn’t know the significance of the game until reading a newspaper the next day that said he had broken the NHL’s colour barrier.
“It was a nice feeling,” O’Ree recalled to The Canadian Press. “I just happened to be playing and just happened to be Black.”
He only played one more game with the Bruins that season. He returned to the team for the 1960-61 season, playing a total of 45 games in the NHL, scoring a respectable four goals and 10 assists.

The athlete touched Boston residents so much in his brief stint there that they also named a street and hockey rink after him.
Organizers received many letters of support for his induction; including one from Karl Subban, whose famous sons P.K. play for the Nashville Predators, Malcolm with the Las Vegas Golden Knights and Jordan, who was recently signed by the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Subban said O’Ree broke the colour barrier for the Bruins in 1958, the same year that he was born.
“He is a pioneer and a trailblazer,” he wrote. “Willie achieved in the face of adversity. He changed the game and he changed society and he changed minds.”
Subban noted that O’Ree made it possible for his sons to play professional hockey.
“He changed hockey which is now for everyone,” he said. “Hockey needed him and so does the Hockey Hall of Fame. The time is right!”

“Willie loved hockey so much that it helped him deal with and overcome all the challenges and racism he faced during his life and hockey career,” said Mike Eagles, a friend and former NHLer for 16 seasons.
O’Ree left Fredericton in 1954 at the age of 17 to play junior hockey with the Quebec Frontenacs. The next year he moved to Kitchener. It was during that second year in junior that he had an unfortunate accident.
“There was a slapshot, and I’m on the ice in front of the net. A ricochet came up and the puck struck me in the eye. I lost 97 per cent vision in my right eye. I was out of action for about six weeks,” he later recalled.
Throughout his career and the many obstacles he faced, O’Ree never told others that he was blind in one eye, which meant he would not be allowed to play in the NHL.
Following his stint within the Bruins, he played in other leagues for teams in Ottawa, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Little is known about the late civil rights champion Dorothy Cotton and the crucial role she played in helping to shape the U.S. civil rights movement.

Cotton, who was one of the closest advisers to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., passed away earlier this month at her home in Ithaca, N.Y. She was 88.
She was forced into action after a white boy riding a bicycle sang “deep down in the heart of niggertown” as he rode by her.
The incident left Cotton outraged and she was soon helping to organize protests against segregation at libraries and lunch counters, in addition to teaching direct-action tactics to students.

The North Carolina native met King Jr. in 1960 when he preached at her church. She was a teacher and was asked to join the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) which, was co-founded by King Jr., to organize peaceful protests and work for the increased rights of Blacks.
Cotton, who is called an “unsung hero” of the movement, worked with King Jr. as the group’s educational director, one of the few high-level positions for women in the SCLC at the time.
She was the only female member of King Jr.’s executive staff and became one of his closest colleagues. Cotton wrote in her biography “If Your Back’s Not Bent,” that her position in King Jr.’s inner circle put her at the forefront of the civil rights movement as an educator, planner, activist and leader.
She had managed to obtain a solid education by putting herself through college while working as a housekeeper for the president of Shaw University. She then earned an undergraduate degree from Virginia State University and a Master’s Degree in speech therapy from Boston University.
Cotton was placed in charge of the Citizenship Education Program, which was instrumental in teaching thousands of poor men and women of their rights to vote and “transform from poorly-educated and disenfranchised people from victims to full citizens.”

She said in a 2013 interview that her work was not publicized at the time for fears the program “would have been shut down for teaching all those old Black folk that they are citizens.”
The program focused on teaching voter registration requirements as well as community and individual empowerment. Most Southern states then had voting registration laws designed around literacy exercises specifically to disqualify Black voters, who to register to vote had to recite parts of the Constitution as well as signing one’s name in cursive writing.
Many of the Blacks were themselves illiterate and were turned away at the polls.
The program led to a wave of education that spread through the local communities, with the residents themselves becoming the teachers. It had a profound impact with more than 6,000 men and women taking part in workshops and classes.
Her “leadership contributed significantly to a movement that has altered the course of social and political life in the U.S. and transformed the place of African Americans and all people of color in civic engagement and leadership,” according to her biography posted on the Dorothy Cotton Institute that was founded by the Center for Transformative Action in 2010.

Cotton worked closely with King Jr. for 12 years and even accompanied him on his trip to Oslo, Norway to receive the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.
Committed to the cause, she remained with the SCLC after King Jr. was assassinated in April 1968 outside the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.
She said her life’s work was based on his philosophy and practices of nonviolence, reconciliation, restoration and grassroots leadership development.
After leaving SCLC, she went on to become the Southeastern Regional Director of ACTION, the federal agency for volunteer programs, Vice-President for Field Operations at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change and Director of student activities at Cornell University.
Cotton later founded Dorothy Cotton & Associates, a consulting company that organized seminars on social change, leadership development, and individual empowerment. She was also a co-founder of the National Citizenship School.

Family and friends are mourning the loss of George Ethelbert Carter, one of this country’s sharpest legal minds and first native-born Black judge.
Carter was surrounded by his family when he passed away last week at his Etobicoke home. He was 96. His funeral service will take place at the Glendale Chapel in Rexdale on June 12.
The Toronto-born Carter was the first of 14 children of John Carter and Louise Braithwaite Carter, who emigrated here from Barbados. He went on to become one of Canada’s first Black lawyers and the first native-born, Black judge.
His mom Louise made sure her children always attended church and school as their father laboured all day in an iron foundry to support the large family.

“I think back to the wonderful good fortune I had in having two great parents,” Carter would say. “They were just ordinary folks and it was at home where the real lessons were learned.”
Though money was tight, Carter attended Harbord Collegiate Institute, where he excelled at classes. He was a top learner and decided to attend university.
He attended University of Toronto, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. The young man then enrolled and saw active duty in 1944 with the Canadian Infantry Corps before pursuing his dream of a legal career.
A large, silent-spoken man, Carter worked as a railroad porter to pay his tuition at Osgoode Hall Law School, from where he graduated in 1948. He was always interested in the community and regularly submitted articles to be published in Contrast Newspaper, where I was a cub reporter.
He was lucky to article with B. J. Spencer Pitt, the only Black lawyer practicing in Ontario in those days. He later he went to work for Sydney Harris, a Jewish Canadian lawyer, since no other law firms would accept Black law students for training.
Pitt and Harris at the time were among the very few firms that opened their doors to train Black law students.
After being called to the Bar in 1949, Carter opened his own firm on Bay Street in 1952. The firm handled mostly real estate, family law and criminal cases.
“I wanted to be a lawyer,” Carter recalled in an early interview. “I wanted to have my own practice and that I did, for 31 years.”
He defended others for decades before being appointed a Judge in the Ontario Provincial Court in 1979 and later, appointed to the Ontario Court of Justice, where he served for 16 years.

“It was a great experience,” the judge once said. “I loved listening to people and their stories and all their problems.”
Carter, who was well-known in the courtroom, was also instrumental in the implementation of Legal Aid in Ontario, for which he is best remembered.
In addition to his distinguished legal career, he never forgot his roots and was always there to help others in need.
He was a founding member of the Toronto Negro Veterans; a member of The Committee for the Adoption of Coloured Youngsters – a group that promoted the adoption of Black children; a founding member of The National Black Coalition of Canada; a founding member and past President of Toronto Negro Business and Professional Association and a Board member of the Ontario Black History Society (OBHS).
The Black community in return loved Carter and let their feelings be known. He has bestowed with many awards including the: Harry Jerome Lifetime Achievement Award; Osgoode Hall Law School of York University Award For Excellence and Honorary Life Membership to The Ontario Judges Association.
He was also honoured by the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers (CABL) and is a recipient of Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.
He was so highly thought off that a bust of Justice Carter was unveiled at the Osgoode Hall Library in May 2014. A television documentary The Making of a Judge was made about his life in 2010 and he was awarded the Order of Ontario in 2014.