Melvin B. Miller
Editor & Publisher

Sen. Brooke leads the way

A good autobiography informs the reader of the elements of the writer’s life which he considers to be most important. It provides a uniquely personal perspective. But former Sen. Edward W. Brooke’s “Bridging the Divide: My Life” does even more than that. This is an insightful account of the courage, character and competence necessary to change the course of history.

The conventional wisdom 50 years ago was that an African American could never rely on the votes of white citizens in a quest for elective office. Despite the fact that racial discrimination was alive and well in the United States, Brooke believed that “white voters would vote for qualified Negro candidates, just as Negroes had voted for qualified white candidates. To me it was logical and it was right.”

Brooke’s first statewide race was against Kevin White for Massachusetts secretary of state in 1960. White used a controversial bumper sticker to promote his candidacy that read, “Vote White.” The inference was obvious. Brooke lost by about 112,000 votes, but 1,095,054 citizens had voted for him. Although it is always better to win, Brooke was encouraged by the size of his vote.

With that race, Brooke caught the bug for public service. After serving for two years as the corruption-busting chairman of Boston’s Finance Commission, he decided to run for attorney general. Once again he was subjected to racially biased dirty tricks. Supporters of his opponent Francis Kelly “hired a bunch of ill-kempt Negroes to drive old cars through elite neighborhoods of West Roxbury and Wellesley, cars plastered with ‘Ed Brooke’ bumper stickers, yelling that they were moving into the neighborhood as soon as Brooke was elected attorney general.”

Brooke soundly defeated Kelly, 1,143,065 votes to 883,710, and the rest is history. In 1962, Brooke became the first African American to be elected to statewide office. After two terms as attorney general, Brooke was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1966, where he served for two terms until 1978.

Brooke had the temperament and the talent to overcome the racial barriers to success. However, his book indicates the emergence of another problem likely to become more pronounced as a growing number of African Americans attain acceptance and success in white society. Brooke noted that some blacks in Roxbury complained they were being ignored as he campaigned statewide for the office of secretary of state.

In a conversation with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., both “agreed that the first steps, winning the right to sit in the front of a bus or to sit at a lunch counter, were easy, compared to what lay ahead. The right to economic justice and economic equality would come much harder.” Most African Americans were unaware of the sophisticated strategies needed to achieve those goals.

Nothing illustrates this difficulty more than Brooke’s meeting with H. Rap Brown in 1967 during Boston’s urban riots. Brown, a militant who coined the phrase “Burn, baby, burn,” was disrespectful and insulting in the meeting. “You’re not black. You are not one of us. In the Senate, you are part of the white establishment,” said Brown.

Quite to the contrary, Brooke was courageous and tireless in the Senate in his pursuit of programs to benefit blacks and other low-income Americans. But his most dramatic stand was the campaign to defeat President Nixon’s nomination of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell to the U.S. Supreme Court. Both had serious racist histories and they were appointed pursuant to Nixon’s Southern strategy. It is most unusual for a senator to reject the judicial appointment of a president who is the leader of the senator’s party. Brooke did it twice.

Among his other talents, Brooke has an engaging literary style that provides extraordinary insight into how a courageous man opened the door for African Americans to gain access to political power in America.

Headline2

“He comes in every February and
reads books on blacks.”