By Tom Godfrey

Ontario’s first Black MPP Leonard Braithwaite fought valiantly to end racial segregation in our schools for which he is still fondly remembered by many in the community who are gearing up for the upcoming elections in June.

The well-liked Braithwaite opened the door for Black MPPs as Alvin Curling, Zanana Akanda, Michael Coteau, Mitzie Hunter; not including MPs as the late Howard McCurdy, Lincoln Alexander, Hedy Fry, Jean Augustine and today’s Greg Fergus, Celina Caesar-Chavannes and immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen.

Lenny, as he was affectionately called, represented the riding of Etobicoke while serving as a Liberal member of the Ontario legislature from 1963 to 1975. He was re-elected in 1967 and 1971 and served as a Liberal critic for labour and welfare.

The popular lawyer and Air Force veteran died in his hometown of Toronto last March 2012. He was 88.

He narrowly captured his seat by just 443 votes and a headline in the Toronto Daily Star then read: “Wins Etobicoke: Braithwaite Ontario’s First Negro MPP.”

Braithwaite is best known for his 1964 maiden speech to the Legislature in which he spoke passionately about the racial segregation that was taking place in some Ontario schools.

It seems incredible now, but Ontario in 1964 still had a law on its books mandating so-called “black schools,” which segregated students by colour.

“There has not been a need for such schools since before the beginning of this century,” Braithwaite told his fellow MPPs. “There may have been a call for “coloured” schools when the Underground Railroad brought U.S. blacks out of slavery to Ontario, but “those days have passed.”

Under the terms of the Ontario Separate Schools Act, the heads of five or more families in a “city, town or village, being coloured people,” could petition the local municipal council to establish “one or more separate schools for coloured people.”

It so happened that a group of black parents had spent a year lobbying unsuccessfully for their children to be integrated into a new school in a nearby town.

Braithwaite would rarely back down in his many fights for the rights of visible minorities and gender equality.

He began his political career in 1960 as a member of the Etobicoke Board of Education. Two years later he was elected as an alderman on the Etobicoke council and ran in the provincial election in 1963, defeating the Progressive Conservative candidate.

He was proud of his service and friendships made in the Royal Canadian Air Force during WW11.

Braithwaite was a graduate from the University of Toronto, where he earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree. He earned a Master of Business Administration from the Harvard Business School, graduating in 1952, and graduated from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1958. He was the first Black lawyer elected as a member of the Governing Council of the Law Society of Upper Canada.

At Osgoode, he was elected class president in his first year and by his fourth, he was president of the student body and was awarded a Gold Key for leadership.

He would never forget about the racism that he faced at the time, during which he was armed with a first-rate education and spotless war record but could not find a job. It was back in the days when your photo had to be attached to a resume.

He was finally given a job working on the night shift at a chocolate factory after the plant’s foremen, who had never received a Black applicant, decided he could not turn away a war veteran.

Through the years he established a small law practice in his beloved Etobicoke, which he would operate for many years.

Following his defeat in 1975, he returned to municipal politics, winning a spot on Etobicoke’s Board of Control. In 1985, he was persuaded to run as a last-minute Liberal hopeful in that year’s provincial election, but lost to the Conservative incumbent.

He managed to gain local fame by helping to erect the first sound barriers to absorb traffic noise between homes and highways in the Etobicoke area.

Braithwaite is still loved and cherished in Etobicoke for his 12-years of unselfish service to the community.

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