Brooke was the last Republican Senator elected from Massachusetts until Scott Brown was elected in 2010. At his death in 2015, Brooke was the oldest living former Senator.
Edward Brooke, a former U.S. senator from Massachusetts and the first African-American elected by popular vote to the chamber, died Saturday. He was 95.
Brooke's death was confirmed by a family spokesman, who said he died surrounded by family at his home in the southern state of Florida.
A liberal Republican, Brooke won his Senate seat in 1966 and was re-elected in 1972. He was one of only two African-Americans to serve in the Senate in the 20th century, and the first since the end of the American Civil War, when state legislatures appointed senators.
President Barack Obama, in a statement, praised Brooke for "an extraordinary life of public service." He also hailed Brooke's pragmatic approach to lawmaking and said he stood "at the forefront of the battle for civil rights and economic fairness."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, a former Massachusetts senator, also issued a statement, calling Brooke a "strong public servant."
Kerry added, "Whether in the Army infantry during World War II, where he was awarded the Bronze Star fighting fascism; or as state attorney general, battling corruption; or, finally, as a United States senator, helping to pass landmark civil rights legislation and pushing for affordable housing, Ed Brooke gave to his country every day of his life."
Brooke was widely seen as a centrist, during an era when Congress was noticeably less partisan than it is now. He was among the first U.S. lawmakers to call on former President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974, as the scandal known as Watergate gripped the nation. He also opposed two Nixon nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court over civil rights issues.
Observers widely viewed Brooke as a consensus builder who backed fair housing legislation and improved ties with China.
He lost his bid for a third term in 1978 to Democrat Paul Tsongas, as details of a bitter divorce drew the attention of the national press corps. The controversy led Brooke to admit that he'd made a false statement under oath during a court deposition.
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MASSACHUSETTS: Politicians from both sides of the aisle mourned the death on Saturday of "trailblazer" Edward Brooke, the first popularly elected black US senator. He was 95.
Brooke, who represented Massachusetts from 1967-1979 in the US Senate, championed laws to benefit the disadvantaged during his two terms.
President Barack Obama hailed his "extraordinary life of public service."
"Ed Brooke stood at the forefront of the battle for civil rights and economic fairness," said Obama, America's first African American president in a statement.
"During his time in elected office, he sought to build consensus and understanding across partisan lines, always working towards practical solutions to our nation's challenges."
The Massachusetts Republican Party praised the "decorated war hero" as a "highly respected legislator responsible for shaping our nation's laws and ensuring equal rights for all men and women."
Born on Oct.26, 1919, Brooke served in the US Army during World War II, fighting in Italy as part of the all-black 366th Infantry Regiment and earning a Bronze Star.
A liberal Republican who grew up in racially divided Washington, Brooke served in the 100-seat US Senate for two terms.
Before Brooke, other African Americans had served in the Senate but they were chosen by state legislatures rather than elected by popular vote.
During a ceremony awarding Brooke the highest civilian award in the US in 2009, Obama said he had "followed the trail" Brooke had blazed through the segregated United States.
Brooke was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and has received honorary degrees from more than 30 colleges and universities.
Brooke studied at Howard University in Washington and practiced law.
Before joining the Senate, he was the attorney general for Massachusetts. He was the first black person to hold a state attorney general post in the US.
"Senator Brooke's accomplishments remind us that anything is possible in our country," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus also paid tribute to a man he called a "pioneer and an inspiration to many" through his life story and relentless commitment to public service.
Secretary of State John Kerry, a former Democratic senator, agreed.
"Ed Brooke: trailblazer, gentleman, public servant personified. Guts and integrity. God bless," he wrote on Twitter.
After Brooke, Democrat Carol Moseley Braun was elected and served in the 1990s as the second African American US Senator. Obama was the third ever elected African American member of the Senate.
Following Obama, black senators Cory Booker, a Democrat, and Republican Tim Scott also won elections to the nation's highest legislative body.
Booker was elected to the chamber in 2013. After being appointed to the post in 2013, Scott won a special election to hold his seat in 2014.
A "deeply saddened" Scott took to Twitter to say that Brooke "was a true trailblazer; those of us who followed cannot thank him enough."
Former congressman Allen West said Brooke was a "fine role model and vanguard."
Brooke is survived by his wife Anne, children Remi, Edwina, Edward, and stepdaughter Melanie, along with four grandchildren.
In September 2002, he was diagnosed with breast cancer, and subsequently underwent a double mastectomy. He later spoke publicly about a disease that many men are not aware of.
Edward W. Brooke III, who in 1966 became the first African-American elected to the United States Senate by popular vote, winning as a Republican in overwhelmingly Democratic Massachusetts, died on Saturday at his home in Coral Gables, Fla. He was 95.
Ralph Neas, a family spokesman, confirmed the death.
Mr. Brooke won his Senate seat by nearly a half-million votes in 1966 and was re-elected in 1972. A skilled coalition builder at a time when Congress was less ideologically divided than it is today, Mr. Brooke shunned labels, but he was seen as a centrist. His positions and votes were consistently more liberal than those of his increasingly conservative Republican colleagues.
He opposed the expansion of nuclear arsenals, pushed for improved relations with China and championed civil rights, the legalization of abortion and fair housing policies. He urged Republicans to match the Democrats in coming up with programs to aid cities and the poor.
“Where are our plans for a New Deal or a Great Society?” he asked in a 1966 book, “The Challenge of Change: Crisis in Our Two-Party System.”
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Edward W. Brooke III.CreditJonathan Ernst/Getty Images
He was a thorn in the side of his party’s leader, President Richard M. Nixon. He successfully led the fight against two Nixon Supreme Court nominees whose positions on civil rights were called into question. When Nixon became entangled in the Watergate scandal, Mr. Brooke called for the appointment of a special prosecutor. He was the first Republican senator to demand Nixon’s resignation.
“His presence in the Senate in those years was absolutely indispensable,” said Mr. Neas, who was chief legislative assistant to Mr. Brooke and later president of the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way. “There were repeated battles during those years. Even some Democrats were retreating on the Senate floor on issues like school desegregation and abortion rights, and Senator Brooke was the one who often single-handedly took on the radical right.”
Still, he disappointed liberals by opposing a program to recruit teachers to work in disadvantaged areas. He sought to deny federal aid to New York City during its financial crisis and resisted changing Senate rules to make filibusters against civil rights legislation easier to stop.
On the issue of the Vietnam War, Mr. Brooke, a decorated combat veteran, was torn, moving from dove to hawk, then back to dove. He was a forceful speaker, often described as gentlemanly and charming, and meticulous about his appearance, sometimes changing clothes three times a day.
His political career began collapsing in 1978. What Mr. Brooke thought would be an amicable divorce from his first wife, the former Remigia Ferrari-Scacco, turned bitter and was played out in the news media, resulting in an admission by Mr. Brooke that he had made a false statement under oath in a deposition.
He lost his bid for a third term to Representative Paul E. Tsongas, a Democrat, who received 55 percent of the vote. Mr. Brooke described the experience as “the lowest point in my life.”
Cleared by the Senate Ethics Committee four months later, he was nevertheless devastated. “Why did it happen?” he said in an interview with The Boston Globe in 2000. “I don’t know. I’ve asked my God that many times. ‘Why, why, why, dear God?’ ”
Mr. Brooke was twice elected attorney general of Massachusetts, the first African-American to be elected attorney general of any state. When President John F. Kennedy heard the news in 1962, on the same day that his brother Edward was elected to the United States Senate, he said, “That’s the biggest news in the country.”
In 1964, as President Lyndon B. Johnson led a Democratic landslide, Mr. Brooke was re-elected attorney general by more votes than any other Republican in the nation. In 1968, he was at the top of many lists of possible Republican vice-presidential candidates. By his own and others’ accounts, he turned down cabinet posts and a seat on the Supreme Court.
The only previous black senators, Blanche K. Bruce and Hiram R. Revels, both Republicans, were elected not by voters but by the Mississippi Legislature in the 1870s.
Mr. Brooke never presented himself as a black politician and grew tired of being called “first this, first that,” he said. He represented all the people of Massachusetts, he said, and wanted no part of being “a national leader for the Negro people.”
Edward William Brooke III was born on Oct. 26, 1919, in Washington. He was the third child and only son of the former Helen Seldon and Edward W. Brooke II, a lawyer for the Veterans Administration and a Republican, as most blacks were then.
He grew up in “a cocoon,” he wrote in his autobiography, “Bridging the Divide: My Life” (2007). He had a stable home, firm religious guidance — he was an Episcopal altar boy — and a good education, attending Dunbar High School, a prestigious black school in Washington.
Surrounded by middle-class blacks, he wrote, he rarely encountered direct racial discrimination, although when the Washington opera was closed to blacks his mother took him to the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Mr. Brooke earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Howard University in 1941. A reservist during college, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant after Pearl Harbor in 1941 and joined the all-black 366th Combat Infantry Regiment.
The regiment was assigned to guard duty in Italy; combat was reserved for whites. “An insult to our dignity,” Mr. Brooke wrote. Put in charge of special events, he brought opera and the heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis to his troops.
After black troops were allowed to serve in combat, Mr. Brooke became a scout assigned to go behind enemy lines to aid Italian partisans. He rose to captain and received the Bronze Star and the Combat Infantryman Badge. But the sting of segregation in the armed forces left him eager to leave the Army. “In some respects,” he said in an interview, “the German prisoners of war fared better than Negro soldiers.”
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President Obama with Mr. Brooke when he received a Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.CreditGerald Herbert/Associated Press
After his discharge, Mr. Brooke enrolled at Boston University School of Law, where he became an editor of the Law Review. He also corresponded with Ms. Ferrari-Scacco, an Italian woman he had met during the war, and she came to Boston. They married in 1947.
A year after Mr. Brooke began practicing law in the predominantly black Roxbury section of Boston, he returned to Boston University to earn a master’s degree in law.
In 1950, persuaded by friends, he ran for state representative in both the Democratic and Republican primaries, as was legal then. He won the Republican nomination but was buried in a Democratic landslide in the general election. He ran and lost again in 1952.
In 1960, Mr. Brooke won the Republican nomination for Massachusetts secretary of state, becoming the first black to be nominated for statewide office in Massachusetts. He was defeated by the Democrat, Kevin H. White, whose campaign issued a bumper sticker saying, “Vote White.”
The new governor, John Volpe, a Republican, appointed Mr. Brooke chairman of the Boston Finance Commission. He turned what had been an ineffectual post into a crusading one, uncovering a scandal involving the illegal disposal of public land.
Two years later, in 1962, Mr. Brooke won the Republican nomination for attorney general by a razor-thin margin over Elliot L. Richardson, a future attorney general of the United States. In the general election, the campaign of his Democratic opponent, Francis E. Kelly, hired blacks to drive through white suburbs yelling that they planned to move in as soon as Mr. Brooke won.
Mr. Brooke was the only statewide Republican winner.
In 1963, Mr. Brooke fought civil rights groups that were calling on students to boycott school to protest segregation in Boston. He said it was his job to enforce state laws, which required children to go to school.
In 1964, Mr. Brooke refused to support the Republican presidential nominee, Barry M. Goldwater, or to be photographed with him. Mr. Brooke said he was serving not just his conscience but also the best interests of the party, which he believed should be more liberal.
Massachusetts voters were hardly put off by his liberal views: In 1966, he handily defeated his Democratic opponent in the Senate race, former Gov. Endicott Peabody.
On the opening day of Congress in 1967, Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts’ senior senator, escorted Mr. Brooke down the Senate’s center aisle to a standing ovation. When Mr. Brooke got his first haircut on Capitol Hill, he integrated the Senate barbershop.
After losing to Mr. Tsongas, Mr. Brooke resumed private law practice in Washington and became chairman emeritus of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. In 1988, he was investigated for using his influence to win a client millions of dollars in federal subsidies for rehabilitation of low-income housing. An aide pleaded guilty to charges in the case, but Mr. Brooke was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing.
Mr. Brooke was divorced from his first wife, Remigia, in 1979. She died in 1994.
He is survived by their daughters, Remi Cynthia Brooke Goldstone and Edwina Helene Brooke Petit, and four grandchildren. Mr. Brooke married Anne Fleming in 1979, and she survives him, as does their son, Edward. In May 2008, the television newswoman Barbara Walters revealed in a memoir that she and Mr. Brooke had begun a clandestine romance in 1973. After telling him in a letter that she would divulge the affair in her book, he wrote back “a very nice note,” Ms. Walters said.
In 2004, Mr. Brooke was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush, whose administration he frequently criticized over the war in Iraq, the antiterrorism legislation called the USA Patriot Act, and its opposition to same-sex marriage.
In September 2002, Mr. Brooke learned that he had breast cancer, a diagnosis that about 1,500 American men receive every year. After a double mastectomy, he was declared cancer free. He then spoke out to warn men — particularly black men, who are statistically more susceptible — about the danger of breast cancer.
Although Mr. Brooke had sought to de-emphasize his race, he remained concerned about racial progress.
“My fervent expectation,” he wrote in his autobiography, “is that sooner rather than later, the United States Senate will more closely reflect the rich diversity of this great country.”
Correction: January 4, 2015
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this obituary erroneously attributed a distinction to Mr. Brooke. He was the first black senator to be returned to office, not the only one. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey was returned to office last year.
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