The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Brooke, Edward William
1919–, U.S. senator (1967–79), b. Washington, D.C. Admitted to the bar in 1948, he served (1963–66) as attorney general of Massachusetts, where he gained a reputation as a vigorous prosecutor of organized crime. Elected (1966) as a Republican to the U.S. Senate, he became the first African-American senator since Reconstruction. Brooke served (1967) on the President’s Commission on Civil Disorders, which investigated the causes of race riots in American cities, and played (1970) a major role in the successful fight against confirmation of the nomination of G. Harrold Carswell to the U.S. Supreme Court. After leaving the Senate in 1979 he headed the National Low-income Housing Coalition. He is the author of The Challenge of Change (1966).
