Bertram L. Baker

Bertram Llewellyn Baker (January 10, 1898 – March 8, 1985) was an American politician who was a member of the New York State Assembly from 1948 to 1970, representing central Brooklyn, New York. He was the first Black person elected to any office by voters in Brooklyn.

Early life Baker was born on the island of Nevis in the British West Indies and immigrated to the United States via Ellis Island in 1915, when he was 17 years old. He settled in Brooklyn, N.Y., obtained a degree in accounting from La Salle Extension University correspondence school in Chicago, and became a U.S. citizen in 1924.

In 1939, Baker was appointed to a patronage job as United States Deputy Collector of Internal Revenue in the income tax division in Brooklyn. Through the 1940s, he served as a "confidential inspector" for John Cashmore, the Brooklyn borough president, an Irish-American, and was a liaison between Cashmore and the growing Black community in central Brooklyn. but finished in 14th place among candidates from Brooklyn, not high enough to win a seat.

When the state Democratic Party bosses realized that their election slates could no longer remain all white, they made a deal to get Baker elected to office. They promised the local incumbent assemblyman, John J. Walsh, another Irish-American, that if he ran for the party's re-nomination in the primary but then withdrew, they would nominate him for a judgeship instead. With the proper timing, under New York State Law and party rules, the party bosses had the right to appoint a replacement nominee to run for the assembly, and that was Baker. (As the result of his election, Baker also became the second person to serve in the New York State Assembly who was born in Nevis, after Alexander Hamilton – something that he was fond of telling.) Baker was a member of the New York State Assembly from 1948 to 1970, sitting in the 167th, 168th, 169th, 170th, 171st, 172nd, 173rd, 174th, 175th, 176th, 177th, 178th, and 179th New York State Legislatures. A revised version was signed by Governor Nelson Rockefeller in 1963 to include all housing except owner-occupied one and two-family dwellings. The federal Fair Housing Act, with even broader reach, was not passed until 1968.

Baker eventually rose to become the assembly's majority whip in 1966 with the emergence of the New York State Black and Puerto Rican Legislative Caucus, and remained in the assembly until his retirement from politics at the end of 1970. She was born in Brooklyn in 1901. Her parents had immigrated from Nevis four years earlier; Bertram and Irene Baker were also first cousins.

Baker's granddaughter is Diane Bemus Patrick, an attorney and first lady of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2015.