Edward Brooke
American politician from Massachusetts (1919–2015)
Edward William Brooke III (October 26, 1919 – January 3, 2015) was an American lawyer and Republican Party politician who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1967 to 1979. He was the first African American elected to the United States Senate by popular vote. Prior to serving in the Senate, he served as the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from 1963 until 1967. Edward Brooke was the first African-American since Reconstruction in 1874 to have been elected to the United States Senate and he was the first African-American since 1881 to have held a United States Senate seat. Brooke was also the first African-American U.S. senator to ever be re-elected. He was the longest-serving African-American U.S. senator at twelve years until surpassed by Tim Scott in 2025.
Born to a middle-class black family, Brooke was raised in Washington, D.C. After attending Howard University, he graduated from Boston University School of Law in 1948 after serving in the U.S. Army during World War II. Beginning in 1950, he became involved in politics, when he ran for a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. After serving as chairman of the Boston Finance Commission, Brooke was elected attorney general in 1962, becoming the first African-American to be elected attorney general of any state.
He served as attorney general for four years, before running for Senate in 1966. In the election, he defeated Democratic former Governor Endicott Peabody in a landslide, and was seated on January 3, 1967.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Edward Brooke” as american politician from Massachusetts (1919–2015). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3276635. VIAF identifies the subject as 30837450. The Library of Congress control number is n80070493. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 2015, 1967 and 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “Edward Brooke” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.