Former U.S. Sen. Edward W. Brooke, a liberal Republican who became
the first black in U.S. history to win popular election to the Senate,
died Saturday. He was 95.
Brooke died of natural causes at his Coral Gables, Florida, home,
said Ralph Neas, Brooke's former chief counsel. Brooke was surrounded by
his family.
Brooke was elected to the Senate in 1966, becoming the first black to
sit in that branch from any state since Reconstruction and one of nine
blacks who have ever served there -- including Barack Obama.
Brooke told The Associated Press he was "thankful to God" that he
lived to see Obama's election. And the president was on hand in October
2009 when Brooke was presented with the Congressional Gold Medal, the
highest award Congress has to honor civilians. Obama hailed Brooke as "a
man who's spent his life breaking barriers and bridging divides across
this country."
Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recalled his first
impression of the newly elected senator when McConnell was a Senate
staffer and described Brooke as "a model of courage and honesty in
office."
"... even from across the Senate chamber, you could sense that this
was a Senator of historic importance," the Kentucky Republican said in a
statement Saturday. "Indeed, he was."
A Republican in a largely Democratic state, Brooke was one of
Massachusetts' most popular political figures during most of his 12
years in the Senate.
Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, the state's first black
governor, remembered Brooke for his unselfish public service.
"He carried the added honor and burden of being `the first' and did
so with distinction and grace," Patrick said. "I have lost a friend and
mentor. America has lost a superb example of selfless service."
Brooke earned his reputation as a Senate liberal in part by becoming
the first Republican senator to publicly urge President Richard Nixon to
resign. He helped lead the forces in favor of the Equal Rights
Amendment and was a defender of school busing to achieve racial
integration, a bitterly divisive issue in Boston.
He also lent his name to the Brooke amendment to the federal housing
act, passed in 1969, which limited to 25 percent the amount of income a
family must pay for rent in public housing.
However, late in his second term, Brooke divorced his wife of 31
years, Remigia, in a stormy proceeding that attracted national
attention.
Repercussions from the case spurred an investigation into his
personal finances by the Senate Ethics Committee and a probe by the
state welfare department and ultimately cost him the 1978 election. He
was defeated by Democrat Rep. Paul E. Tsongas.
Tsongas' widow, U.S. Rep. Nikki Tsongas, said Saturday that Brooke's career was "as courageous as it was historic."
In a Boston Globe interview in 2000, Brooke recalled the pain of losing his bid for a third term.
"It was just a divorce case. It was never about my work in the
Senate. There was never a charge that I committed a crime, or even
nearly committed a crime," Brooke said.
In 2008, pioneering newswoman Barbara Walters said she had an affair
with the then-married Brooke in the 1970s, but it ended before he lost
the 1978 election. She called him "exciting" and "brilliant."
Brooke received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a White House
ceremony in 2004. Five years later, when Brooke received the
congressional honor in Washington, he cited the issues facing Congress
-- health care, the economy and the wars overseas -- and called on
lawmakers to put their partisan differences aside.
"We've got to get together," Brooke said, turning his eyes to Senate
GOP Leader McConnell. "We have no alternative. There's nothing left.
It's time for politics to be put aside on the back burner."
As Brooke sought the Senate seat in 1966, profiles in the national
media reminded readers that he had won office handily in a state where
blacks made up just 2 percent of the population -- the state that had
also given the nation its only Roman Catholic president, John F.
Kennedy.
He beat Democrat Endicott Peabody, a former governor who also
supported civil rights, by a 3-to-2 margin despite predictions of a
"white backlash" against him.
Commenting on Brooke's election and other developments that day,
Martin Luther King Jr. commented that "despite appeals to bigotry of an
intensity and vulgarity never before witnessed in the North, millions of
white voters remained unshaken in their commitment to decency."
Brooke had parlayed his probes of local corruption into a successful
run for state attorney general in 1962 when he became the highest
ranking black elected official in the nation. He won re-election as
attorney general in 1964 even though Democrats dominated other races.
Somewhat aloof from the civil rights movement of the 1960s,
especially the militant wing, he said blacks had to win allies, not
fight adversaries. But he also said of civil rights leaders: "Thank God
we have them. But everyone has to do it in the best way he can."
He had refused to endorse Sen. Barry Goldwater for president in 1964,
commenting later, "You can't say the Negro left the Republican Party;
the Negro feels he was evicted from the Republican Party."
The son of a Veterans Administration lawyer, Brooke was raised in a
middle-class black section of Washington, attending segregated schools
through his graduation from Howard University in 1941. He served in an
all-black combat unit in World War II, and later settled in Boston after
graduating from Boston University Law School.
Brooke was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002 and went public the
following year, saying he wanted to encourage men to perform
self-examinations and advocating that insurance companies cover male
mammograms.
Brooke is survived by his second wife, Anne Fleming Brooke; their son
Edward Brooke IV; his daughters from his first marriage, Remi Goldstone
and Edwina Petit; stepdaughter Melanie Laflamme, and four
grandchildren.
