Edward W Brooke was the first African American to be elected to the US Senate since the days of reconstruction after the civil war, when black senators such as Hiram Revels of Mississippi were not elected but appointed. Brooke, who has died aged 95, was a Protestant, Republican man of colour in Democratic, largely Catholic and mainly white Massachusetts.
A moderate and a centrist, he condemned both the white segregationist governor of Georgia Lester Maddox and the black power leader Stokely Carmichael as extremists, and announced in so many words that: “I do not intend to be a national leader of the Negro people.” Perhaps in large measure because of that stance, he did become an important figure for African Americans. Ironically, since his career took off as a result of his reputation as a tough prosecutor of organised crime, it ended partly as a result of his own rather trivial financial improprieties.
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