Edward W. Brooke III, 95, Senate Pioneer, Is Dead 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 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.” 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. 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.”
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 01:56:12 +0000
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