Edward Brooke
On this date in 1966, Edward W. Brooke was elected to the U.S. Senate.
Brooke, a Massachusetts Republican, became the first Black senator since the Reconstruction era in the United States and the first Black senator elected by popular vote.
The 1960s were years of racial violence; that year, 43 cities were hit, 11 killed, more than 400 injured, and 3,000 arrested.
The next year, a record number of rebellions, as Black people called them, made (at the time) 1967 “the worst year for riots in the United States.”
Black Americans in Congress, 1870-1989.
Bruce A. Ragsdale & Joel D. Treese
U.S. Government Printing Office
Raymond W. Smock, historian and director 1990
E185.96.R25
