Edward W. Brooke, III

Born October 26, 1919, Edward Brooke was the first African American elected to major statewide office in Massachusetts (Attorney General, 1962) and the first African American elected and re-elected to the U.S. Senate (1967-79) by popular vote. His father, Edward Brooke, Jr. was a graduate of Howard University School of Law (1918) and served as an attorney for the Veterans Administration for 50 years—an exceptional achievement for an African-American person at that time.

Brooke attended public schools in Washington DC, and graduated from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in 1936. When he entered Howard University he originally planned to be a pre-med. major, but he changed to Sociology because he found the coursework more interesting. His professor of Political Science at Howard was diplomat, statesman and Nobel Prize winner, Ralph Bunche.

After graduating from Howard and the Reserve Officers Training Corps in 1941, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. He served with the all-Black 366^th Combat Infantry Regiment. In charge of discipline and recreation at Fort Devens, in Massachusetts, Brooke defended enlisted men in military court cases.

For his leadership during 195 days in combat in Italy, he was awarded the Bronze Star and promoted to captain. He also received the Distinguished Service Award.

Motivated by his experience in the army, Brooke enrolled in Boston University Law School in 1946, and became editor of the Boston University Law Review. He earned an LLB in 1948 and an LLM in 1949 and began his private law practice in Roxbury, after declining offers to join other firms, including an offer from his father to begin a father and son practice in Washington DC. Friends encouraged Brooke to run for political office. His first efforts to enter politics on the Republican slate in 1950 and 1952 were promising, but unsuccessful.

After those bids for office, he increased his involvement with community affairs, and became active with various groups, including the Boston branch of the NAACP and the Greater Boston Urban League, the Boy Scouts of America and the American Veterans of WW II. He also focused on his law practice during that time. In 1960 he ran for Massachusetts' Secretary of State and became the first African American to be nominated by a major party for a statewide office in Massachusetts—considered quite an accomplishment since there were only 93,000 black residents in the state. He received over one million votes, but did not win that election. In 1962, without the support of Republican party leaders who had endorsed his candidacy for lower offices earlier, he won the election to the office of Attorney General and became the first African American to be elected as a state's attorney general.

As Massachusetts' Attorney General, he battled corruption in government and targeted organized crime. He proposed laws that protected consumers, struck at housing discrimination and reduced air pollution. Brooke worked closely with the Massachusetts Crime Commission and successfully conducted the massive investigation in the "Boston Strangler Case." Due to some of his seemingly conservative and unpopular stances on issues such as a black student boycott of Boston's public schools, he endured the wrath of civil rights leaders.

In 1965 he decided to seek election to the U. S. Senate. In his book, The Challenge of Change: Crisis in Our Two-Party System, published in 1966, he attempted to encourage his Republican Party to become more responsive to social change, and he identified discrimination against 10% of the country's population, due to the color of their skin, as an important issue. Edward Brooke won the election, with a margin of almost a half million votes, and became the first African American to serve since Reconstruction. (He was the third black American in the U.S. Senate and the first to win a seat in a popular election.) He served two terms—enjoying an overwhelming re-election in 1972.

Appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to the Commission on Civil Disorders, Senator Brooke's work included making recommendations for the protection of black people and civil rights workers from harassment. Later, that work was expanded to include protection against housing discrimination, which led to the 1968 Civil Rights Act. He was a strong opponent of the escalation of the Vietnam War and fought proposals that would have expanded Cold War nuclear arsenals. He also worked to improve relations with the People's Republic of China, which led to the recognition of that country.

Although he had supported Richard Nixon's campaigns in 1968 and 1972, he clashed with Nixon on several issues, including the nomination of two anti-civil rights judges to the Supreme Court. He was the first senator to call for the President's resignation during the Watergate scandal.

After Senator Brooke was defeated in the 1978 election, he resumed his law practice and headed the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Senator Brooke is the father of three and currently lives with his wife in Warrenton, Virginia. He has received over 30 honorary degrees and awards, including the NAACP Springarn Medal and the National Conference of Christians & Jews' Charles Evans Hughes Award.

Throughout his career, Senator Brooke has endeavored to make America a better place for all Americans. His efforts and service to the commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States were recognized recently, when a state courthouse in Massachusetts was named the Edward W. Brooke courthouse. He thus became the first black American to have a state courthouse named in his honor.

Photo Usage:
Permission to use the above photo was granted by Senator Edward Brooke.

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