Lois Bronz, 90, was first African-American head of Westchester legislature

Lois Bronz, a longtime educator who spent 16 years on the Greenburgh town board before becoming the first African American and first woman elected chair of the Westchester County legislature, died Monday night. She was 90.

She was a trailblazer, Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner said of Bronz, that made it easier for other women and black candidates to run for office and win election.

“It took somebody like her to break the glass and make it acceptable,” Feiner said. “Her presence in Westchester County opened the door for many people.”

Bronz was an educator for 32 years. After her 16 years in local politics, she was elected to the county Board of Legislators in 1994. She served until 2009.

When she became chairwoman in 2002, she was both the first woman and first African-American to serve in the role.

Ben Boykin, a White Plain Democrat who’s now chairman of the county legislature, said Bronz was ahead of her time.

“Widely respected, liked by everyone,” he told The Journal News/lohud. “She will be sorely missed.”

Bronz grew up in New Orleans amid social upheaval and with outward racism a fact of daily life. In 1964, part of her house was destroyed by a bomb outside a bathroom window. No one was injured and the bomber was never caught, but Bronz was convinced the attack was because her oldest child was one of the first black students enrolled at an all-white high school.

She was a mother of three and widowed by the time she met her future husband at Mardi Gras in 1966. Chuck Bronz. a teacher like her, was on vacation at the time.

He was white and Jewish and she was black and Catholic so they wed in Mount Vernon where the interracial union was legal, they said in a 2004 interview with lohud. They eventually both ended up teaching in Greenburgh and were married for 50 years.

Chuck Bronz died last year.

Ken Jenkins, the deputy Westchester County executive who served with Bronz as a lawmaker, said she had a tenacity and spirit of justice that was shaped by the discrimination she faced in her life. Jenkins, who followed in Bronz’s footsteps as an African-American chair of the legislature, called her a mentor with sharp wit who had an unshakeable quiet, cool dignity.

“You would never see Lois Bronz ruffled at all,” Jenkins said. ”There were a lot of things she had going through her life to help build her to be the person she is, or that …

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