Black History Month: Edward Brooke
Hiram Revels was the first African-American to serve in the United States Senate. But it would be almost a century before an African-American would win election to the Senate by a popular vote, another Republican. In 1967, Massachusetts would send Edward William Brooke III to the Senate, for two full terms. He represented Massachusetts in the Senate from 1967 to 1979. Brooke was a member of the liberal wing of the Republican Party. He wrote the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which prohibits housing discrimination. Brooke became a prominent critic of President Richard Nixon and was the first Senate Republican to call for Nixon's resignation in light of the Watergate scandal.
Brooke was born on October 26, 1919, in Washington, D.C.. He was raised in a middle-class section of the city, and attended Dunbar High School, which at the time was one of the most prestigious high schools for African American children. After graduating in 1936, he enrolled in Howard University. He considered going to medical school, but he ended up with a degree in political science.
Brooke graduated in 1941, and enlisted in the United States Army immediately after the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor. He was commissioned as an officer, and served five years in the Army. He saw combat in Italy during World War II as a member of the segregated 366th Infantry Regiment. Brooke earned a Bronze Star Medal. In was in Italy where Brooke met his future wife, Remigia Ferrari-Scacco. They were married in 1947 and had two daughters together, Remi and Edwina.
After his discharge from the Army, Brooke graduated from the Boston University School of Law in 1948. In 1950 he ran for a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, running in both the Democratic and Republican primaries. Brooke won the Republican nomination, but lost the general election. He ran unsuccessfully for office twice more, including a very close loss in the race for secretary of state to Kevin White, a future mayor of Boston. Despite his losses, he was seen as a rising star in the Republican Party.
Governor John Volpe of Massachusetts appointed Brooke to the position of chairman of the Finance Commission of Boston. In that role he investigated financial irregularities and uncovered evidence of corruption in city affairs. He had a reputation for tenacity that led to his successful election as Attorney General of Massachusetts in 1962, the first elected African-American Attorney General of any state. His department launched successful prosecutions against a number of organized crime figures and corrupt government officials. He was criticized in the press over the police handling of the Boston strangler case for permitting an alleged psychic to participate in the investigation.
In 1966, Brooke ran for the Senate in Massachusetts. He defeated former Governor Endicott Peabody by a margin of 1,213,473 votes to 744,761. According to an article in Time Magazine, his race had "no measurable bearing" on the election. Publicly, Brooke said, "I do not intend to be a national leader of the Negro people". Brook was considered to be a moderate-to-liberal Republican senator. He organized a group known as the Senate's "Wednesday Club", a group of progressive Republicans who met for Wednesday lunches and strategy discussions. He supported Michigan Governor George W. Romney and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller in their respective runs for the 1968 GOP presidential nomination against Richard Nixon. Brook disagreed with Nixon on social policy and civil rights.
In his second year in the Senate, Brooke became a leading advocate against discrimination in housing. He called for more affordable housing. He and Walter Mondale, who was then a Minnesota Democrat and fellow member of the Senate Banking Committee, co-authored the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination in housing. The Act also created the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to enforce the new law. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act into law on April 11, 1968, one week after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Brooke became dissatisfied with the weakened enforcement provisions that emerged from the legislation. He made repeated proposals for proposed stronger enforcement provisions during his Senate career. In 1969, Congress enacted the "Brooke Amendment" to the federal publicly assisted housing program. It limited the tenants' out-of-pocket rent expenditure to 25 percent of their income.
When Richard Nixon became President, Brooke battled his own party's president over a number of social issues. He opposed Nixon Administration attempts to close down the Job Corps and the Office of Economic Opportunity and to weaken the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. All of these had been important elements of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. He managed to make political enemies both on the left and the right. In 1969, Brooke spoke at a Wellesley College's commencement. He criticized students protesters, calling them "elite ne'er-do-wells". The student government president was a future presidential candidate named Hillary Rodham, who in tirn criticized Brooke, calling student protest as part of the "indispensable task of criticizing and constructive protest".
Brooke was a leader of the bipartisan coalition that defeated the Senate confirmation of Clement Haynsworth, a Nixon nominee to the Supreme Court. A few months later, he once again organized Republican opposition to defeat Nixon's second Supreme Court nominee Harrold Carswell. Nixon next nominated Harry A. Blackmun, who was confirmed and later wrote the majority opinion in the court's landmark decision of Roe v. Wade.
Despite Brooke's disagreements with Nixon, Nixon sought out Brooke's support. He offered to make Brooke a member of his cabinet, or appoint him as ambassador to the UN. There was even discussion about selecting Brooke as a possible replacement for Spiro Agnew as Nixon's running mate in the 1972 presidential election. In 1972 both Brooke and the teams of Nixon and Agnew were re-elected. Brooke defeated Democrat John J. Droney in his senatorial election by a vote of 64%-35%.
Brooke became the first Republican to call on President Nixon to resign, doing so on November 4, 1973, shortly after the Watergate-related "Saturday night massacre". By this time Brooke had become the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee. He also sat on two powerful Appropriations subcommittees, Labor, Health and Human Services and Foreign Operations. He continued to advance liberal causes. He was a leader in enactment of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which ensured married women the right to establish credit in their own name. He also partnered with Indiana senator Birch Bayh in 1974, to retain Title IX, a 1972 amendment to the Higher Education Act of 1965, which guarantees equal educational opportunity for girls and women. In 1976, he also argued in support of increased legalized abortion. In the Appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services, the Anti-abortion movement led the fight to prohibit funding for abortions of low-income women insured by Medicaid, over the opposition of Brooke.
In 1976, after Gerald Ford replaced Nixon as President, the media speculated on his possible candidacy for the Vice Presidency as Ford's running mate. But by this time Brooke's support among Catholics in Massachusetts had weakened because of his stance on abortion. During the 1978 re-election campaign, the state's bishops spoke in opposition to his re-election.
Brooke's popularity suffered further after he went through a divorce late in his second term. His finances were investigated by the Senate, and also by a prosecutor in Middlesex County named John Kerry. Prosecutors eventually determined that Brooke had made false statements about his finances during the divorce. Brooke was not charged with any crime, but the negative publicity cost him support in his reelection campaign. He was defeated in his bid for re-election to Democrat Paul Tsongas.
After leaving the Senate, Brooke practiced law in Washington, D.C. and in Boston. He also served as chairman of the board of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. In 1984 he was selected as chairman of the Boston Bank of Commerce, and a year later he was named to the board of directors of Grumman. He experienced more legal problems in 1992 when a former assistant of his stated in a plea agreement as part of an investigation into corruption at the Department of Housing and Urban Development that Brooke had falsely answered questions about whether he or the assistant had tried to improperly influence HUD officials on behalf of housing and real estate developers who had paid large consulting fees to Brooke. The HUD investigation ended with no charges being brought against Brooke.
On June 20, 2000, a newly constructed Boston courthouse was dedicated in his honor. The Edward W. Brooke Courthouse is part of the Massachusetts Trial Court system. It is home to the Central Division of the Boston Municipal Court, Boston Juvenile Court, Family Court, and Boston Housing Court, among others.
In September 2002, he was diagnosed with breast cancer and assumed a national role in raising awareness of the disease among men. On June 23, 2004, President George W. Bush awarded Brooke the Presidential Medal of Freedom. On October 28, 2009, two days after his 90th birthday, Brooke was presented with the Congressional Gold Medal.
On January 3, 2015, Brooke died at his home in Coral Gables, Florida, at the age of 95. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Brooke was born on October 26, 1919, in Washington, D.C.. He was raised in a middle-class section of the city, and attended Dunbar High School, which at the time was one of the most prestigious high schools for African American children. After graduating in 1936, he enrolled in Howard University. He considered going to medical school, but he ended up with a degree in political science.
Brooke graduated in 1941, and enlisted in the United States Army immediately after the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor. He was commissioned as an officer, and served five years in the Army. He saw combat in Italy during World War II as a member of the segregated 366th Infantry Regiment. Brooke earned a Bronze Star Medal. In was in Italy where Brooke met his future wife, Remigia Ferrari-Scacco. They were married in 1947 and had two daughters together, Remi and Edwina.
After his discharge from the Army, Brooke graduated from the Boston University School of Law in 1948. In 1950 he ran for a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, running in both the Democratic and Republican primaries. Brooke won the Republican nomination, but lost the general election. He ran unsuccessfully for office twice more, including a very close loss in the race for secretary of state to Kevin White, a future mayor of Boston. Despite his losses, he was seen as a rising star in the Republican Party.
Governor John Volpe of Massachusetts appointed Brooke to the position of chairman of the Finance Commission of Boston. In that role he investigated financial irregularities and uncovered evidence of corruption in city affairs. He had a reputation for tenacity that led to his successful election as Attorney General of Massachusetts in 1962, the first elected African-American Attorney General of any state. His department launched successful prosecutions against a number of organized crime figures and corrupt government officials. He was criticized in the press over the police handling of the Boston strangler case for permitting an alleged psychic to participate in the investigation.
In 1966, Brooke ran for the Senate in Massachusetts. He defeated former Governor Endicott Peabody by a margin of 1,213,473 votes to 744,761. According to an article in Time Magazine, his race had "no measurable bearing" on the election. Publicly, Brooke said, "I do not intend to be a national leader of the Negro people". Brook was considered to be a moderate-to-liberal Republican senator. He organized a group known as the Senate's "Wednesday Club", a group of progressive Republicans who met for Wednesday lunches and strategy discussions. He supported Michigan Governor George W. Romney and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller in their respective runs for the 1968 GOP presidential nomination against Richard Nixon. Brook disagreed with Nixon on social policy and civil rights.
In his second year in the Senate, Brooke became a leading advocate against discrimination in housing. He called for more affordable housing. He and Walter Mondale, who was then a Minnesota Democrat and fellow member of the Senate Banking Committee, co-authored the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination in housing. The Act also created the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to enforce the new law. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act into law on April 11, 1968, one week after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Brooke became dissatisfied with the weakened enforcement provisions that emerged from the legislation. He made repeated proposals for proposed stronger enforcement provisions during his Senate career. In 1969, Congress enacted the "Brooke Amendment" to the federal publicly assisted housing program. It limited the tenants' out-of-pocket rent expenditure to 25 percent of their income.
When Richard Nixon became President, Brooke battled his own party's president over a number of social issues. He opposed Nixon Administration attempts to close down the Job Corps and the Office of Economic Opportunity and to weaken the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. All of these had been important elements of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. He managed to make political enemies both on the left and the right. In 1969, Brooke spoke at a Wellesley College's commencement. He criticized students protesters, calling them "elite ne'er-do-wells". The student government president was a future presidential candidate named Hillary Rodham, who in tirn criticized Brooke, calling student protest as part of the "indispensable task of criticizing and constructive protest".
Brooke was a leader of the bipartisan coalition that defeated the Senate confirmation of Clement Haynsworth, a Nixon nominee to the Supreme Court. A few months later, he once again organized Republican opposition to defeat Nixon's second Supreme Court nominee Harrold Carswell. Nixon next nominated Harry A. Blackmun, who was confirmed and later wrote the majority opinion in the court's landmark decision of Roe v. Wade.
Despite Brooke's disagreements with Nixon, Nixon sought out Brooke's support. He offered to make Brooke a member of his cabinet, or appoint him as ambassador to the UN. There was even discussion about selecting Brooke as a possible replacement for Spiro Agnew as Nixon's running mate in the 1972 presidential election. In 1972 both Brooke and the teams of Nixon and Agnew were re-elected. Brooke defeated Democrat John J. Droney in his senatorial election by a vote of 64%-35%.
Brooke became the first Republican to call on President Nixon to resign, doing so on November 4, 1973, shortly after the Watergate-related "Saturday night massacre". By this time Brooke had become the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee. He also sat on two powerful Appropriations subcommittees, Labor, Health and Human Services and Foreign Operations. He continued to advance liberal causes. He was a leader in enactment of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which ensured married women the right to establish credit in their own name. He also partnered with Indiana senator Birch Bayh in 1974, to retain Title IX, a 1972 amendment to the Higher Education Act of 1965, which guarantees equal educational opportunity for girls and women. In 1976, he also argued in support of increased legalized abortion. In the Appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services, the Anti-abortion movement led the fight to prohibit funding for abortions of low-income women insured by Medicaid, over the opposition of Brooke.
In 1976, after Gerald Ford replaced Nixon as President, the media speculated on his possible candidacy for the Vice Presidency as Ford's running mate. But by this time Brooke's support among Catholics in Massachusetts had weakened because of his stance on abortion. During the 1978 re-election campaign, the state's bishops spoke in opposition to his re-election.
Brooke's popularity suffered further after he went through a divorce late in his second term. His finances were investigated by the Senate, and also by a prosecutor in Middlesex County named John Kerry. Prosecutors eventually determined that Brooke had made false statements about his finances during the divorce. Brooke was not charged with any crime, but the negative publicity cost him support in his reelection campaign. He was defeated in his bid for re-election to Democrat Paul Tsongas.
After leaving the Senate, Brooke practiced law in Washington, D.C. and in Boston. He also served as chairman of the board of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. In 1984 he was selected as chairman of the Boston Bank of Commerce, and a year later he was named to the board of directors of Grumman. He experienced more legal problems in 1992 when a former assistant of his stated in a plea agreement as part of an investigation into corruption at the Department of Housing and Urban Development that Brooke had falsely answered questions about whether he or the assistant had tried to improperly influence HUD officials on behalf of housing and real estate developers who had paid large consulting fees to Brooke. The HUD investigation ended with no charges being brought against Brooke.
On June 20, 2000, a newly constructed Boston courthouse was dedicated in his honor. The Edward W. Brooke Courthouse is part of the Massachusetts Trial Court system. It is home to the Central Division of the Boston Municipal Court, Boston Juvenile Court, Family Court, and Boston Housing Court, among others.
In September 2002, he was diagnosed with breast cancer and assumed a national role in raising awareness of the disease among men. On June 23, 2004, President George W. Bush awarded Brooke the Presidential Medal of Freedom. On October 28, 2009, two days after his 90th birthday, Brooke was presented with the Congressional Gold Medal.
On January 3, 2015, Brooke died at his home in Coral Gables, Florida, at the age of 95. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.