Edward Brooke: A Groundbreaking Politician Who Doesn't Fit Easily in Any Box

 

In a complicated world it is tempting to look at history and find narratives that, if read a certain way, make the path to today's present seem inevitable. This is particularly tempting when it comes to the political situation in America when both sides and every ideology cherry picks our history to fit a certain narrative.

But history has never worked that way and what seems inevitable in hindsight would strikes those who lived through as ridiculous at the time. Take the narrative of the 1964 presidential election. With the benefit of more than sixty years both sides will argue that their respective political party's makeup was set in stone because of events in that fateful year. Those on the far left will argue that it was the passage of the Civil Rights Act that handed the South to the Republican Party.  Those on the right will hail Goldwater for being the bulwark for conservative politics and led the path to the conservative revolution which found its fruition in the Reagan landslide in 1980.

The problem is this narrative goes against what both sides took away from while that election was going on and in its immediate aftermath.  Indeed Goldwater himself never thought he had a chance of winning and knew from the moment he clinched the nomination that his campaign was going to end in disaster.  Indeed Goldwater had every reason to assume it would end his political life because he was up for reelection in the Senate that year and chose to commit to the campaign and run for President instead.  When he lost in the biggest electoral defeat for any candidate to that point in the popular vote. LBJ had gotten 61 percent to Goldwater's 37 percent, a margin of over 16 million votes.  That the Republicans had done extremely well in the South was cold comfort to a party that had been swamped in the seven other major geographic regions of the country, particularly considering Nixon had won 26 states four years earlier to Goldwater's 6 in 1964.

The Republican Party was almost relieved by the majority of the defeat: Clifton White and his conservative mentors had led what was essentially a coup over the traditional leadership to earn Goldwater the nomination. Now that he had been obliterated whatever momentum Goldwater had in the party since 1960 had been squashed flat and the party would move forward from the state and city Republicans as opposed to the Congressional ones. In what was a foreshadowing of things to come Theodore White said that there was a difference in the cleavage between these groups: "Republican governors know that government is necessary and Congressional Republicans think strong government is bad." Even after Reagan came along two years this belief would hold until at least the end of the 20^th century.

And among the many tactical mistakes Goldwater had made was one his fellow Senators had objected to the post.  Minority Leader Everett Dirksen had been integral to Senate Republicans breaking the filibuster of Southern Democrats and ultimately leading the passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964. Only seven Republican Senators had voted against it – and one of them had been Goldwater. Dirksen, who had conservative values not out of line with Goldwater, had urged his colleague to vote for it because he knew that by voting against it would guarantee the Republicans would lose the notable gains they had been making among African-American voters in Eisenhower and Nixon's runs for the White House. But Goldwater had stood by his principles – and as a result Goldwater received only 6 percent of the African-American vote.

So in the aftermath of the disaster of 1964 the Republicans were planning to go back to the center. They could not have foreseen how the riots that would follow in the next few years – most notably in Watts – were going to fuel the 'backlash' movement that Goldwater had started. There were signs of it in the next midterms as Republican Governors won deeply Democratic states – not just Reagan in California but Spiro Agnew in Maryland and Winthrop Rockefeller in Arkansas – but it was yet unclear if that narrative would hold true in Congress where the bigger issue was the increasing disaster the Vietnam War was becoming. And while Strom Thurmond had managed to win election to the Senate having changed parties another candidates election gave a different narrative to where the Republican Party might go.

Edward William Brooke III was born in D.C to a middle-class black family. Raised in a racially segregated environment Brooke would rarely interact with the white community. After graduating from Howard University he would enlist in the Army after Pearl Harbor. He would see combat in Italy and his fluent Italian and light skin would help him cross enemy lines to communicate with Italian partisans. He would also meet his future wife Remigia Ferrari-Scacco in Italy.

Exposed to the inequality and racism in the army and combined with FDR's decision to order Japanese-Americans interned during the duration, he began to rethink his support of him. He would eventually achieve the rank of captain and receive the Bronze star and a Distinguished Service Award.

In 1950 he entered politics for the first time when he ran for a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. At the time he affiliated with neither party and chose to run in both primaries. He won the Republican nomination but lost in the general to a Democrat opponent and would lose again 2 years later. In 1960 he ran for secretary of the Commonwealth and won the Republican nomination. However he lost to the future Mayor of Boston Kevin White. The campaign issued a bumper sticker 'Vote White', which many took as a reference to his race. Despite the race's closeness Republican Governor John Volpe offered him a number of jobs. Brooke eventually accepted a position on the Boston Finance Commission. He would then run for State Attorney General and win in 1962, the first African-American of either party to win that office at a state level.

When Goldwater was nominated for President Brooke found his nomination offensive and publicly broke with it, imploring his fellow Republicans "not to invest in the pseudo-conservatism of zealots." While Goldwater lost Massachusetts in a landslide (he received just 23.4 percent of the vote) Brooke would win reelection to his office by nearly 800,000 votes. By 1965 Brooke had emerged as the main Republican spokesman for racial equality.

In 1966 he would run against former Governor Endicott Peabody for the Senate Seat that the Republicans had held in that state, defeating him by nearly half a million votes. As Time wrote the black vote had 'no measurable bearing on the election as less then 3 percent of the vote was black and both Peabody and Brooke were pro-civil rights. Brooke condemned both Stokely Carmichael and Georgia's Lester Maddox as extremists. He was the first African-American since Reconstruction to be elected to the Senate and the first one ever elected by popular vote.

Brooke would later say that "In all my years at the Senate, I never encountered an overt act of bigotry." He recalled visited the swimming pool in the Senate Office building where Thurmond and fellow segregationist senators John McLellan of Arkansas and John Stennis of Mississippi invited him to join him in the pool 'without hesitation or ill will. These were men who consistently voted against legislation that would have provided equal opportunity to others of my race…it was increasingly evident that some members of the Senate played on bigotry purely for political gain."

Romney was a member of the moderate to the liberal Northeastern wing of the part and would organize  'the Wednesday club' of progressive Republicans for strategy sessions. He supported first George Romney of Michigan and Nelson Rockefeller's bid for the Presidential nomination against Richard Nixon, mainly because he frequently differed with the future President on matters of social policy and civil rights. When he visited Vietnam he broke with his party in arguing that negotiations rather than escalation were necessary.

By his second year in the Senate Brooke took his place as an advocate against discrimination in Housing and affordable housing. He would work with Walter Mondale to co-author the 1968 Fair House Act which would create HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. LBJ would sign the Fair Housing Act into law on April 11^th, one week after the assassination of Martin Luther King. He would also be the father of the Brooke Amendment to the assisting housing program which limited the tenants out-of-pocket rent expenditure to 25 percent of the income. Furthermore he would vote to confirm Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme court. During Nixon's administration he would consistently oppose the attempts to close down foundational element of Johnson's Great Society program.

In 1969 Brokke spoke at Wellesley College commencement against 'coercive protest, calling some students 'elite ne-er do well's." The student body president Hilary Rodham would depart from her planned speech to rebut Brooke's words, affirming the 'indispensable task of criticizing constructive protest.""

Brooke would vote to confirm many of Richard Nixon's nominees to the Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Warren Burger, Harry Blackmun and Lewis Powell. But he also helped lead Republican opposition of Clement Haynsworth and Harrold Carswell to the bench and voted against Rehnquist's nomination as associate justice. Despite his opposition to many positions Nixon took Brooke respected him. He'd offered to name him to cabinet of ambassador when he was elected and was speculated as a possible replacement for Spiro Agnew during the lead-up to the 1972 election. That year Brooke won reelection in landslide over Democrat John J. Droney. Considering that Nixon's 49 state landslide nevertheless resulted in the Democrats gaining two seats in the Senate the fact that Brooke won by nearly thirty percent in the only state George McGovern would carry was one of the few highpoints for Senate Republicans that year.

Brooke then became the first Republican to call on Nixon resign immediately after the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, actually going so far as to recommend it to the President one week after words. By this point he was the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee and on Appropriations.  He was responsible for vital legislation during that decade, including enactment of the E      qual Credit Opportunity Act and leading the fight to retain title IX.

In 1975 the extension of the Voting Rights Act was at state, Brooke would face John Stennis is extended debate and it was in large part due to that it won extension to the first time. In 1976 he would also take on support for wide-scale legalized abortion. This led to a battle by the Anti-Abortion crusade and would weaken his support among Catholics vital in a state like Massachusetts. Despite speculation that Gerald Ford might consider him as a running mate Ford chose Robert Dole. This decision ended up costing him his Senate seat as he would be defeated by Paul Tsongas in 1978, one of the few Democratic gains during that year's midterms. Brooke would be the longest serving African-American Senator in history until Cory Booker surpassed his tenure in 2025.

Brooke's accomplishments are as groundbreaking in political history as Adam Clayton Powell in the House, Douglas Wilder would be for governors and would lead to Barack Obama's election. (Brooke would endorse him in 2008). Yet only ten years after he passed away he has become nearly forgotten by every aspect of his career, be it the GOP or Congress. And while African-Americans have spent so much of the last decade seemingly drawing attention to every single African-American who accomplished something, no matter how obscure,  I have yet to see any articles highlighting his achievements which were far more substantial and important then even I thought when I began to write this article. One suspects the reasons for this is because in the binary view of the world that so much of America holds Brooke throws a huge wrench into it.

Paradoxically given their troubled history with African-Americans for the last half-century the Republicans attempts to obscure him makes the most sense. It has far less to due with his racial background then the fact his ideology is one the party wants to forget it had. Brooke was a moderate, bordering on liberal Republican who supported civil rights, women's rights and civil liberties for gay rights – all of which sadly appeal to far too little of the GOP's base right now. He was fiscally conservative but unlike the majority of his colleagues in Congress (such as Goldwater) he was a pragmatist saying: "There are things that people can't do for themselves and therefore government must do it for them." That position was going out of style by the time Brooke lost reelection and its impossible to imagine him being able to get along with Reagan's philosophy when he became President two years later.

With African-Americans it speaks to an issue more about them rather than Brooke. By the time Brooke managed his historic accomplishment 'the movement' was beginning to lose interest in politics and was focusing far more on activism.  By any logical construct Brooke was doing far more for civil rights and African-Americans during the 1960s and 1970s then any of those who were in charge including the rising star Jesse Jackson.  (It couldn't have helped that he considered Stokely Carmichael and Lester Maddox in the same breath.)

I have little doubt that despite the fact he was doing everything he could for his people Brooke heard the expression 'Uncle Tom' over and over. The African-American community, then as now, had a low opinion of the Republican Party even when so many of their Congressional members were on their side when it came to civil rights during the 1950s and 1960s. (To be fair, they didn't much like Democrats either.) In large part this may have been due to their simplistic view of how the government worked. When Ralph Abernathy, a key member of the civil rights movement visited Nixon's White House they made it clear that they believed all the President had to do was press a button and the government would give them what they needed. (This theory of progressive politics has remained steady for half a century; under Obama is was referred to as the magic lantern theory.)

Brooke was in a position to understand this was not the case and he devoted his career to fighting the tide to make it work for the underprivileged. And it is worth noting his battles showed genuine political courage as opposed to that of the activist. Turning against Richard Nixon, fighting battles for civil rights in Congress and fighting for things such as housing and abortion were brave stands, particularly in a party that was going against it and for a state that didn't have enough African-American support to help him if he went too far to the left for his own good.

The circumstances of Brooke's election and reelection are also not things the Democrats are interested in highlighting either. For one there is the fact that Brooke's battle against segregationists remind people that not all of the segregationists marched out of the Democratic Party like Strom Thurmond did and that many of them were present until the early 1980s. For a party that wants to argue that it has always been the party of equality and civil rights and that bigotry and prejudice have always been the property of the GOP this is something they would rather not mention in Daily Kos.

And from a political standpoint Brooke's accomplishment point out another major weakness for the Democrats when it came to running for the Senate, particularly in the South. It is far easier for a white man to get elected as a Democrat then an African-American. The decision to ignore this reality, particularly in the last decade, has caused them to lose so many races that they could win. And it points out the uncomfortable truth that it is easier for a minority to run as a Republican in these states and win. It's why Tim Scott was able to win election in South Carolina in 2016 but Jamie Harrison was humiliated by Lindsey Graham when he ran against him in 2020. It's why Beto O'Rourke came far closer to defeating Ted Cruz in 2018 than Colin Allred did in 2024 – and why I have serious doubts that no matter who the Republicans nominate in 2026 Jasmine Crockett will be able to be them. Only in Georgia was Raphael Warnock able to win a Senate seat. But it's worth remembering that when he won reelection in 2022, Stacey Abrams was trounced by Brian Kemp when the two had a rematch for governor of that state.

In the era of identity politics it is easy – too easy – too argue that when a minority candidate runs for elected office and losing to a white Republican that it is bigotry that elected them, particularly in the South. Increasingly in my lifetime I've heard the argument made whenever a female candidate or a minority candidate runs for President and whenever question about their qualifications, the response is typical: "If they were a white man, you wouldn't ask that question." The problem is when you're running for any political office electability is the only question that is important for a candidate.  And coming from my perspective as a Democrat if you choose to ignore as a liability I can assure you the opposition won't.

In recent years there has been much attention paid to Shirley Chisholm's run for the Democratic nomination in 1972, both as an African-American and as a woman. But the fact she wasn't even through her second term in Congress before she chose to run for the Democratic nomination. If she had been a white man and made that decision everybody in politics would have immediately said that he had no business running for the highest office in the land. The candidacy was not taken seriously because there was no reason to take it seriously. And neither did the voters. The most she got in any state was 157.435 votes or 4.5 percent in California which amounted to 2.7 percent of the vote and 26 delegates.  It was not a serious candidacy and never had any chance of getting anywhere and yet she is held in higher regard by African-Americans then Brooke even though he got nearly three times as many votes in Massachusetts then she did in her entire primary run.

In my lifetime the only thing the Chisholm campaign inspired was a series of unqualified African-Americans in either party making runs for the Presidency with nothing more to advocate for them then their race. With the sole exception of Jesse Jackson's 1988 run, between 1984 and 2004 they were basically empty suits, from Alan Keyes to Alan Sharpton to Carol Moseley Braun and later on Herman Cain. We've seen similar patterns play out for so many other underqualified female and minority candidates throughout this century and by any logical standard so was Kamala Harris' 2020 run for the Democratic nomination.  By contrast both Nikki Haley and Tim Scott were far more qualified in terms of legislative and governing experience.

Brooke very well might have made a good Presidential candidate had the party been willing to go in that direction during the 1970s. It would have been a harder road for him then it would be future candidates such as Obama but he would have been more qualified then Jesse Jackson when he ran or men such as Keyes and Sharpton. Brooke would have understand how the corridors of power worked, how to reach across party lines and when to stand against your leadership. I don't know if when Cory Booker made his rec0rd breaking speech last year he was thinking of the legacy of Brooke or how it made it possible for him to be there. But I think Brooke would have been proud of him, even if Booker would not have thought the same thing.