Dr. Locksley Edmondson, the first Black professor at Waterloo, died on August 18, 2026 in Ithaca, New York, at age 92.
An influential Jamaican scholar whose career spanned over five decades across several countries, Edmondson was a founding faculty member in Waterloo’s Political Science department, joining in 1963. He held masters and doctoral degrees in Political Science from Queen's University (Ontario). His research and teaching specializations included international relations (especially concerning Africa and the Caribbean) and race relations (especially concerning the Black World).
In 1967, Edmondson took a leave of absence from Waterloo to teach in Makerere University in Uganda. He returned to North America in the early 1970s and eventually took up a position at Cornell University, where he became the director of African Studies. Edmondson’s obituary shares that he was “a Pan Africanist firmly committed to the freedom of Black societies worldwide.”
Dr. Christopher Taylor, Associate Vice-President, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism, writes in his 2026 book Unmasking DEI: “The Black faculty members at UW in the 1960s had a large impact not only on the local community, but also on the international community as well.
“Locksley Edmondson was the first Black professor at UW (Glaser, 2017). Although he stayed with the university for a few short years in the Political Science department, he was later the chair of multiple United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) meetings on Caribbean culture and migration. […] Whether (Waterloo’s early Black) professors stayed with UW or left to pursue other interests, they had an immense heart for bettering communities in Canada and their countries of origin.” (Taylor)
Edmondson was featured in the 2021 Waterloo News story, A brief history of Black experience at Waterloo, 1960s -1990s, by Jonathan Zi En Chan, PhD candidate in History.