The first ever Black Alumni Awards Gala was held last Friday, the first day of Homecoming 2004, in the Great Hall of Hart House. The hall was filled to near capacity with U of T alumni and current students for the awards, which were organized by the Black Students’ Association (BSA). Ten distinguished individuals were presented with awards.

Leonard Braithwaite, who was the first black Canadian to be elected to a provincial legislature, won one of the two Lifetime Achievement Awards.

“You can’t do it yourself, you’ve got to make friends,” Braithwaite said in his acceptance speech.

“I had never dreamed of going to U of T,” continued Braithwaite, who in 1950 completed his undergraduate degree in Commerce. “It was so different then; it wasn’t multicultural.”

The Awards Dinner was the brainchild of the BSA.

“This is the only event of its kind in Canada, but it is commonplace in US universities,” said one member of the organizing committee. The party filled the Great Hall to near capacity and lasted well into the evening.

“I hope the media is taking note of the calibre of young people here that will help the legacy of the BSA,” said Sheldon Taylor, president of U of T’s Black Alumni Association. “We must join hands and ensure that [the legacy] is not just here now, but here tomorrow.”

Support for the occasion included half of the book proceeds from Dawn P. Williams’ Who’s Who in Black Canada, a biographical directory containing profiles of more than 700 notable black Canadians.

When asked how she found and researched individuals for inclusion in the book, Williams said she relied on “press conferences, newspapers… but in the end a lot of it came from word of mouth.” While the book is over 400 pages long, “some of the people we approached were reluctant to be included,” added Williams. An updated and expanded edition will be released next year.

Many of the award recipients were active in fighting for the kinds of equal opportunities that they were deprived of in their student years.

“Being the first is not easy,” said Mary-Anne Chambers, minister of training, colleges and universities in Dalton McGuinty’s cabinet. “Being the first is lonely; you’re an easy target and can be picked off without regret.”

Several speakers said some of U of T’s administration erroneously believed that it was not until the sixties that the first black students graduated from the university. In fact, corrected the speakers, blacks have been students at the university for more than a century. Dr. Anderson Ruffin Abbott, the first Canadian-born black doctor, graduated from U of T in 1861.

The purpose of the occasion, said members of the BSA, was to honour the leadership and courage of past graduates as well as to reach towards the future.

“It gives me quite a lift. I see so many bright, new young leaders,” said Bromley Armstrong, winner of the Literary Achievement Award. “Don’t sit down and watch the clock go by; there’s a lot to be done.”