| Edward Brooke, a Lifelong Pioneer |
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| Regional Archives | |||
| By James Wright - Special to the Informer | |||
| Thursday, November 05, 2009 | |||
 Senator Edward Brooke III, retired Republican Senator from Massachusetts Courtesy PhotoBrooke, 90, received the Congressional Gold Medal Wed., Oct. 28, before a packed U.S. Capitol Rotunda in the presence of the president of the United States, leaders of both houses of Congress and both parties, as well as family, friends and admirers. President Barack Obama said that Brooke was deserving of the award. "Today's honor bears a unique significance, bestowed by this body of which he was an esteemed member, presented in this place where he moved the arc of history, surrounded by so many-myself included-who have followed the trail that he blazed," Obama said. Brooke was the first Black popularly elected senator, as well as the first African American to serve in that body since Reconstruction. Brooke served from 1967-1979 and through his years as a senator, he was junior in status to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D) and as a Republican was in the political minority. Nevertheless, he was effective in authoring an amendment, called the Brooke Amendment, which stated that people living in public housing must pay up to 25 percent of their income for housing. He was a key force in fair housing legislation, led the opposition to two failed Nixon nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court, was a critic of the Vietnam War and was the first senator to call for Nixon's resignation because of the Watergate scandal. It is interesting to note that Brooke is the last Republican that Massachusetts has sent to the U.S. Senate. He was defeated by Paul Tsongas in the 1978 elections because of smears regarding his personal life. Before his career in the Senate, he was the first Black elected attorney general of any state, served on a highly respected Boston Finance Commission and was the editor of the Boston University Law Review while studying law. A Dunbar High School and Howard University graduate, Brooke had a distinguished military career in Europe despite serving in a segregated unit. Obama said that Brooke's achievements, in retrospect, seem to be how he did things and how he conducted his life. "But that was Ed Brooke's way--ignore the naysayers, reject the conventional wisdom, and trust that ultimately, people would judge him on his character, his commitment, his record and his ideas," the president said. "He ran for office, as he put it 'to bring people together who had never been together before.' And he did." In order to win the Congressional Gold Medal, the individual must win the overwhelming votes of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and have the approval of the president. In the case of Brooke, he had the support of 76 senators and 290 representatives that were caucused by D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) and Kennedy, before he died in August. The medal was first awarded to General George Washington by the Second Continental Congress in 1776. African Americans who have won the award are singer Marian Anderson (1977), boxer Joe Louis (1982), civil rights leader Roy Wilkins (1984), Olympic champion Jesse Owens (1988), General Colin Powell (1991), former South Africa president Nelson Mandela (1998), civil rights champion Rosa Parks (1999), Major League Baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson (2003), civil and women's rights champion Dorothy Height (2003), Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Coretta Scott King (2004) and the Tuskegee Airmen (2006). Norton, a Dunbar High School graduate, said that Brooke's success was a result of taking advantage of unexpected and rare opportunities."You may have been an improbable senator, a man born in the District of Columbia who goes off to WWII without having the right to vote for president or mayor or a member of the House, much less senator," Norton said. "Perhaps improbable, but certainly not an accidental senator,” she said. "It took a man of extraordinary talent, will, appeal and confidence to become the Barack Obama of the 20th century by being the first African American to be elected to the United States Senate post-Reconstruction." Norton made Brooke's struggles and achievements comparable to what is going on in the District of Columbia. "The hurdles you jumped were so high that your heroic feats have led home town residents to dare to believe that after two centuries the same Congress that gives you the Congressional Gold Medal today will give voting rights to the people of the District of Columbia this year,” she said. Even though he represented Massachusetts, Brooke supported statehood for the District and signed on with Home Rule for the city in 1973. Brooke's entry into the Senate, called by some the "most exclusive club in the world" was an eye-opener in terms of how politics was practiced in the 1960s and 1970s. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) pointed out contradictions between what politicians say on the floor and in the public discourse but practice behind closed doors. "On his arrival in the Senate, Edward Brooke tells us in his autobiography [Bridging the Divide, 2006], the same senators who spoke out so forcefully for segregation were happy to invite their new colleague into the Senate swimming pool," Hoyer said. "The same men who stoked the racial fears of their constituents, who did so much to hold back equality in this country, had no qualms about sharing their own pool with a Black man. ‘If a Senator truly believed in racial separatism, I could live with that,’ Brooke wrote, ‘but it was…evident that some members of the Senate played on bigotry purely for political gain.’" Brooke's presence in the Senate provoked discussion about his future in other powerful positions in the government. In "Bridging the Divide", Brooke talks about signs in early 1968 that promote a ticket with him as vice president and then Michigan Gov. George Romney as president. Brooke said he never took it seriously that year, even though the moderate GOP organization, the Ripon Society, tried to have him placed as the vice presidential candidate under Nixon. The book also talks about a potential Brooke vice presidential nomination in 1972 because then Vice President Spiro Agnew was widely unpopular. Of course, Nixon stuck with Agnew but the fact that the Senate's lone African American was mentioned for arguably the second most powerful position in the country said a lot about Brooke. "He had almost no chance of being on the ticket in 1968 and in 1972," said Michael Fauntroy, an assistant professor of public policy at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. Fauntroy has written a book, "Republicans and the Black Vote, 2006", which talks about the state of relations between Blacks and the GOP. Fauntroy said that there was a ray of hope for Brooke to be a vice presidential pick in 1976 because the president, Gerald Ford was a moderate. This did not sit well with some White conservatives. "In my book, I point out that the [Ronald] Reagan campaign distributed flyers during the time of the North Carolina primary that Ford would put a Black man on the ticket for the fall election," Fauntroy said. "You can imagine how White conservatives in that state felt about that." Reagan went on to win the primary, which jump started his candidacy that year, but he lost the nomination to Ford. Ford selected Sen. Robert Dole as his running mate but lost to Jimmy Carter. The ray of hope, according to Fauntroy, was that Brooke had a better chance of being selected vice president in 1976 than he would have been in 2008 under Sen. John McCain because of Ford's moderate politics. In his book, Brooke talked about how he was considered for a position on the U.S. Supreme Court had Justice Thurgood Marshall stepped down. Brooke said he was approached by a presidential aide but that he did not take the conversation seriously. D.C. Council member Harry Thomas (D-Ward 5) attended the Gold Medal ceremony. He said that Brooke's life has a message for youth. "Edward Brooke is an indication to our young people that they can overcome any obstacle," he said. "Many people said he could not win being a Black Republican in a White Democratic state, but he did. And he did it during a time that Black people did not have the right to vote."
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