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Lord Pitt; One of 1st Blacks in House of Lords

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Lord David Pitt, 81, an immigrant from Grenada who became one of the first blacks admitted to Great Britain’s House of Lords. Born in St. David’s, Grenada, in 1913, Pitt received a medical degree from Edinburgh University in 1937. He began his medical practice and a political career in St. Vincent and Trinidad, and returned to London in 1947 to start a medical practice there. In 1959, he became one of the first blacks to run for Parliament as the Labor Party candidate in a London electoral district, but was defeated. He lost again in 1970. He was elected to the Greater London Council in 1961, and in 1974 became its first black chairman. He left in 1975 when he became a peer, joining the upper house of Parliament. On Sunday in London of cancer.

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