KeepTheFaith!!!!! First Black Elected to Senate Dies By SYLVIA WINGFIELD The Associated Press Saturday, January 03, 2015 8:19 PM BOSTON | 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 home, said Ralph Neas, a former Brooke aide. 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 Obamas 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 whos spent his life breaking barriers and bridging divides across this country. 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. 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 told ABC News that Nixon had lost the confidence of the country and I dont know of anything he could do to turn it around. 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 Democratic Rep. Paul E. Tsongas. In a Boston Globe interview in 2000, he 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. I would certainly not be truthful if I didnt say I was sorely hurt when the people of Massachusetts voted against me and didnt look beyond the allegations and didnt remember what I had tried to do for them. The first blacks served in the Senate in the 1870s, just after the Civil War, when senators were still selected by state legislatures rather than by popular election. Mississippis postwar legislators sent two blacks to the Senate. Hiram R. Revels served about 14 months in 1870-71, and Blanche K. Bruce served a full six-year term from 1875 to 81. Not long before Obama was sworn in as president, Brooke told the AP that he had been frequently asked if he thought Obama could be elected. And Id say Im the last person to say it couldnt happen. Ive already shown that white voters are open to voting for black candidates, so it made sense to me, he said. Though I was pleased, Im not that surprised that he was able to pull it off. But I am thankful to God to live to see this happen. When Brooke received the congressional honor in Washington later in the year, he cited the issues facing Congress — health care, the economy and the wars overseas — and called on lawmakers to put their partisan differences aside. 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. 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. Brooke said at the time that his election proved people will elect a man on the basis of his programs. But, he added, I dont presume that the election of one man will solve the racial problem. He won re-election as attorney general in 1964 even though Democrats dominated other races, commenting later: I won by 797,510 votes. Ill remember that figure as long as I live. 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. I want to be elected on my own ability. Only then do you have progress. ... People should not use race as a basis for labeling me, he told The Washington Post in early 1966. 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.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 01:48:18 +0000
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