Edward William Brooke

Diagnoses

Vocation

Notable

American lawyer and politician, and the first African-American elected to the U.S. Senate. A Republican from Massachusetts, Brooke was a 1941 graduate of Howard University, joined the service during WWII, and graduated with a law degree from Boston University Law School in 1948. After unsuccessful attempts to gain political office in Massachusetts, he was elected Attorney General in 1962 and again in 1964 where he established a reputation for himself as tough on organized crime. In 1966 he was elected to the US Senate where he served for two terms as a liberal Republican until 1979. He was active in the Civil Rights movement even after he left the Senate. In 1979, he joined a Washington law firm. In 2002 he was diagnosed with breast cancer and worked actively to alert men to the disease. Two years later he was awarded the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom. Brooke has been married twice and his first marriage produced two daughters. In 2008 Barbara Walters revealed that she and Brooke had had an affair during the 1970s when Brooke was married to his first wife. Link to Wikipedia biography