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Nancy Leftenant-Colon, when she served in the U.S. Army Nurse...

Nancy Leftenant-Colon, when she served in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in the 1940s and 1950s. Credit: Courtesy Nancy Leftenant-Colon

History is known to repeat itself, and there is a lot of repetition happening on Long Island. Across industries, in government, within the halls of education and beyond, Black Long Islanders became pioneers in their fields, and now a new group of leaders is blazing a path.

A recent history maker is Siela Bynoe — a cancer survivor, first-generation American and the first Black state senator to represent Long Island since the chamber was founded in 1777.

With her November 2024 victory, she follows in the footsteps of Barbara Patton, the first Black state representative from Long Island. The ties that bind are celebrated in this edition of LI Life, as we mark the start of Black History Month.

— THE EDITORS

Credit: Newsday/Thomas A. Ferrara

THE RT. REV. ORRIS WALKER

The Rt. Rev. Orris Walker made history when he became the first Black elected bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island in 1987. He supported ordaining women and backed the controversial election of a gay Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire, according to Newsday archives.

Walker retired in 2009 after members of the diocese urged him to step down, although neither he nor the diocese disclosed why. He was succeeded by The Rev. Lawrence Provenzano, who announced his Sept. 2026 retirement in December. Walker died in 2015 at 72.

“A large portion of our diocese was struggling with issues of racial equality,” Provenzano told Newsday in 2015. “For the diocese to have selected a Black bishop was a bold and very encouraging statement for the life of the church.”

Credit: freelance/Howard Schnapp

BARBARA PATTON

Barbara Patton was Long Island’s first Black state representative in Albany in 1982, and the first Black person to represent a suburban district in the New York State Legislature. She was warned that the seat was predominantly white and Republican and that she would likely lose the race. The opposite happened. In a 2009 interview with Newsday, Patton reflected on her political win. “The proudest moment I had was when I actually won the general election in 1982, because it was an effort by a tremendous number of people. And while this was a district that was made up of minority people, I had people from across the spectrum of politics, race, religion, gender, people who came to work on my campaign. She spoke to Newsday this week and said, “I am 80 years old and I just feel that I had a fabulous life. I have really just been blessed,” she said. “And that started in 1982 with me winning that seat in the New York State Legislature.”

Credit: Newsday/Michael E. Ach

WILLIAM WILLETT

William Willett rose in the ranks from patrolman to commissioner, the first Black person to hold the job, during his nearly 50 years on the Nassau County police force.

The Westbury native won praise for his professionalism and dedication to law enforcement from Republicans and Democrats. He died in 2002 at 71. Willett, who was born in Glen Cove, joined the Nassau police department in 1953 as a beat cop patrolling Garden City Park. He was one of 15 Blacks in the department at the time. In 1981, he was named deputy chief of patrol and later became an inspector and first deputy commissioner. In 2000, then-County Executive Thomas Gulotta named Willett as police commissioner. Willett retired in 2002, and in September 2020, county legislators unanimously approved a bill to rename Nassau’s police headquarters in Mineola after him, making Willett the first Black person in Nassau to have a county building named after them.

Credit: Howard Schnapp

DAVID PATERSON

David Paterson became New York’s first Black governor and its first blind governor in 2008 when he succeeded former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who stepped down amid a prostitution scandal. Paterson became legally blind at 3 months old following an ear infection. His family moved from Harlem in 1958 to Carolina Avenue in Hempstead when he was a child because public schools there could accommodate him.

“My mother said who you go to school with is who you socialize with, and eventually who you will do business with,” Paterson told Newsday in an interview. He never learned Braille, but instead compensated by memorizing. Paterson served until 2010 and did not seek election following accusations he improperly intervened in a domestic violence case involving a member of his staff. In 2020 he released his memoir, “Black, Blind, & In Charge.”

Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca

SIELA BYNOE

It’s been less than a month since Siela Bynoe, 57, of Westbury, was sworn in as

the first Black state senator to represent Long Island in the governing body’s 247-year history. In Albany she will represent the 6th District, where nearly 60% of residents are Black or Hispanic, and which spans Hempstead, Uniondale and New Cassel.

“I’ve poured my whole life into public service ... This is the work that I love to do, and I do it from the heart,” she told Newsday in December. Bynoe, who moved to Long Island with her family when she was 5, had no plans to enter public life. As a young girl with dreams of becoming a banker, one of her favorite activities was lending Monopoly money to her siblings.

The experience came in handy after she graduated from Westbury High School and fulfilled that dream at the former European American Bank in Uniondale.

Credit: Howard Schnapp

NANCY LEFTENANT- COLON

When Nancy Leftenant-Colon, of Amityville, died at 104 on Jan. 8, she left behind a legacy of perseverance and breaking barriers, Newsday reported in her obituary. Leftenant-Colon was the first Black woman to be admitted into the U.S. Arm y Nurse Corps after President Harry S. Truman ordered the military to desegregate in 1948. She said she stood strong in the face of racism and other adversity. “You cry on the inside, but you couldn’t let anybody see you in that state,” she told Newsday in 2020. “I don’t know anything that would turn me away from nursing. That was my baby.”

Credit: James Carbone

JOYCE SMITH

Joyce Smith became the first Black Nassau County district attorney in 2021 when she was appointed to the job after former DA Madeline Singas stepped down to assume her role as a state Court of Appeals judge. Smith served as Nassau’s top prosecutor in an interim role until Republican Anne Donnelly was elected to a four-year term as district attorney later that year. Smith did not seek election and is now an executive assistant district attorney in the office of Queens DA Melinda Katz. During her tenure as Nassau DA, Smith enacted several initiatives, including Nassau’s first pre-arraignment diversion program, led significant investigations to combat violent crime, promoted enhanced services to the victims of gender-based violence, led efforts to improve the diversity and inclusiveness of the office and championed legislation to increase juror pay, Katz said.

Dr. Lorna Lewis, superintendent of Malverne schools in a socially...

Dr. Lorna Lewis, superintendent of Malverne schools in a socially distance classroom the Davison Avenue Intermediate School in Lynbrook on July 23, 2020. Credit: Raychel Brightman

LORNA LEWIS

Lorna Lewis, a Long Island school administrator and educator with nearly 40 years’ experience, in 2018 became the first woman of color to preside over the New York State Council of School Superintendents, which represents more than 800 top education leaders statewide. Lewis was the first Black woman to head two predominantly white school districts on Long Island. She spent five years in the East Williston system before moving on to lead the Plainview-Old Bethpage district. “She is a superstar among superintendents,” said a former employer, William Johnson, the schools chief in Rockville Centre. Lewis enrolled at Fordham University when she was 16 and earned a bachelor’s degree in physics. She went on to obtain a master’s degree in the same subject from Rutgers University and a doctorate in science education from Teachers College, Columbia University.

On September 22, 1999, Lee A. Hayes of East Hampton holds photos of his time as a Tuskegee Airman during World War ll. Despite his certification as a bomber pilot, Hayes told Newsday he was unable to gain employment as a commercial pilot after the war. Credit: Newsday/David L. Pokress

LEE HAYES

East Hampton’ s Lee Hayes, as part of the famed Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, was one of the first Black men to serve as a military pilot. About 1,000 Black men trained for the unit between 1941 and 1946, according to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana. Ha yes told Newsday in 2011 that he assumed he would get a job as a commercial pilot when he came home, but no airline hired him or any of the members of the Tuskegee Airmen. Still, Hayes told Newsday that he never let the discrimination he faced turn him bitter and tried never to let disappointment over the lack of job opportunities get the better of him. “You don’t have time to feel bitter,” Hayes said. “You just try to figure out what to do next. You can’t give up.” He settled in East Hampton with his wife and children, where he worked many jobs, including as a custodian at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, and he served as a town councilman, Newsday reported. Hayes died in 2013 at 91.

Credit: Newsday/Daniel Goodrich

FRANCEL TROTTER-BELLINGER

Francel Trotter-Bellinger became the first Black woman to serve as a judge in Suffolk County District Court on March 4, 1991. The court has five courthouses in five of the towns in the county. Trotter-Bellinger was a North Babylon native who grew up in the Capitol View area of southwest Washington, D.C. Before addressing those in her courtroom, she spoke to an audience of U.S. senators in 1961. She was 10. “If we read more, we might become teachers, doctors, chemists or other useful men and women,” she told them on behalf of the children in her majority-Black neighborhood who wanted their own community library. The article in the now-defunct Washington Star showed a smiling Trotter holding up the letter she read at the Senate hearing presided over by then-Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia). After her speech, he told her, “I would like to say that you have made the finest appearance before our committee today,” according to the newspaper account. The library was funded and opened in 1965.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the date The Rev. Lawrence Provenzano will retire

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