Opinion
Sen. Edward Brooke Dead at 95
“Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now”
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The Skanner Newspaper, established
in October 1975, is a weekly publica-
tion, published each Wednesday by
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S
andwiched between the
deaths of former New York
Gov. Mario Cuomo and
popular ESPN sportscaster Stuart
Scott, the passing of former Mas-
sachusetts Senator Edward W.
Brooke III at the age of 95 did not
get nearly the attention it
deserved.
Though two African Americans
were elected to the U.S. Senate
during the Reconstruction Era by
the Mississippi legislature –
Hiram R. Revels and Blanche K.
Bruce, both Republicans – Brooke
was the first Black elected to the
upper chamber by popular vote,
beginning his term in 1967. What
made his election remarkable at
the time was that a Black Republi-
can Episcopalian could be elected
statewide in Massachusetts, a pre-
dominantly Democratic and
Catholic state with a Black popu-
lation of less than 3 percent. It
would be another 25 years before
another African American – Carol
Moseley Braun of Illinois – would
win a U.S. Senate seat (1992).
Prior to his election to the Sen-
ate, Brooke served two terms as
attorney general of Massachusetts.
When he came to Washington, he
declined to join the Congressional
Black Caucus (CBC) and told
Time magazine: “I do not intend to
be a national leader of the Negro
people. I intend to do my job as a
senator from Massachusetts.”
While doing his job, Brooke
showed that he could be a Black
Republican without selling out his
principles or abandoning the fight
for civil rights.
When Barry Goldwater won the
party’s 1964 presidential nomina-
civil rights.
On Nov. 4, 1973, Brooke
T HE C URRY became the first Republican to call
R EPORT
for Richard Nixon’s resignation
after the famous “Saturday night
massacre” that took place when
George E.
Nixon ordered the firing of Spe-
Curry
cial Prosecutor Archibald Cox
after Cox issued a subpoena for
copies of Nixon’s taped conversa-
tions recorded in the Oval Office.
Brooke assumed an offensive
tion, for example, Brooke, the
state attorney general, refused to posture as well, particularly on
be photographed with Goldwater housing issues. He co-sponsored
or endorse the Arizona ultracon- the Fair Housing Act of 1968,
which prohibited discrimination
servative.
In the 1966 book titled, The based on race, color, religion or
Challenge of Change: Crisis in ethnicity. It was signed into law by
Our Two-Party System, he asked, President Lyndon B. Johnson a
rhetorically: “Where are our plans week after the assassination of Dr.
and expanded. He was also part of
the team of legislators who
retained Title IX that guarantees
equal education to females and the
Equal Credit Act, a measure that
gave married women the right to
have credit in their own name.
In 1967, Brooke served on the
11-member President’s Commis-
sion on Civil Disorders, better
known as the Kerner Commission,
which was established by Presi-
dent Johnson to investigate the
causes of the 1967 race riots and
to provide recommendations for
the future.
At various points during his
career, Brooke was at odds with
civil rights leaders and liberals. As
attorney general, he opposed the
What made his election remarkable was that a Black
Republican Episcopalian could be elected in
Massachusetts, a predominantly Democratic and Catholic
state with a Black population of less than 3 percent
for a New Deal or a Great Socie-
ty?”
Though fellow Republican
Richard Nixon was in the White
House, Brooke opposed Nixon’s
attempts to abolish the Office of
Economic Opportunity and the
Job Corps and weaken the Equal
Employment Opportunity Com-
mission.
And when Nixon nominated
Clement Haynsworth and Harrold
Carswell to the U.S. Supreme
Court, Brooke was part of a bipar-
tisan coalition that blocked the
appointment of the two nominees
who were considered hostile to
Martin Luther King, Jr.
He continued to work on
strengthening the law and in 1969,
Congress passed the “Brooke
Amendment” limiting public
housing tenants’ out-of-pocket
rent expenditure to 25 percent of
the resident’s income, a percent-
age that has since increased to 30
percent.
With the Voting Rights Act up
for renewal in 1975, Brooke
engaged in an “extended debate”
with John Stennis (R-Miss.) on the
Senate floor that resulted in the
landmark measure being extended
NAACP’s call for a boycott of
Boston’s public schools to protest
the city’s de facto segregation,
saying the law required students to
stay in school.
In his 2006 autobiography,
Bridging The Divide: My Life
(Rutgers
University
Press),
Brooke said, “My fervent expecta-
tion is that sooner rather than later,
the United States Senate will more
closely reflect the rich diversity of
this great country.”
Throughout his life, Brooke did
that exceptionally well.
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GOP Official’s White Supremacist Past?
T
here they go again! Just as
the Republican Party is
poised to take control of
Congress, a key official’s actions
and words remind us – just in time
for the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Holiday – that it remains implaca-
bly hostile to what King
represented and what the holiday
stands for.
Louisiana blogger Lamar White
Jr.’s revealing last week that Rep.
Steve Scalise (R-La.), now the
third-ranking officer in the GOP’s
House majority leadership struc-
ture, spoke at a White-supremacist
convention in 2002 while a state
L AST
C HANCE
Lee A.
Daniels
public-policy matters.
However, Scalise’s claim of
ignorance about EURO produced
widespread skepticism, even
among some conservatives, given
that he spoke to the group during
its two-day convention at a hotel
poster-board for stomach-churn-
ing racist invective. For example,
one post from 2007 denounced the
increasingly multiracial character
of today’s Germany, declaring,
“The beautiful Germany of the
1930s with blonde children happi-
ly running through the streets has
been replaced by a multi-racial
cesspool. Out of work Africans
can be seen shuffling along the
same streets which used to be
clean and safe in the days of
[Hitler’s Nazi Party].”
The pushback forced Scalise to
quickly issue another statement
declaring that his appearance at
Scalise’s claim of ignorance about EURO produced
widespread skepticism, even among some conservatives
representative, set off the by now
well-practiced minuet of yet
another prominent conservative
trying to distance himself or her-
self from having associated with
bigots.
First, Scalise through a
spokesperson acknowledged that
he had spoken to the group, the
European-American Unity and
Rights Organization, or EURO,
but said he had had no inkling of
their anti- Black, Hispanic and –
Jewish views. No transcript or
otherwise hard evidence of what
Scalise said then has surfaced to
contradict – or support – his asser-
tion that he spoke only of general
Page 2 The Portland and Seattle Skanner January 7, 2015
in his own district and that its
racist views had been discussed in
several recent local news articles.
EURO, which had been founded
two years earlier by David Duke,
the notorious racist and former
Louisiana state legislator, had
links to several other similar
Southern-based racist groups,
although, according to the South-
ern Poverty Law Center, which
tracks U.S. hate groups, it was and
is largely “a paper tiger, serving
primarily as a vehicle to publicize
Duke’s writing and sell his
books.”
Nonetheless, like its confeder-
ates among hate groups, it was a
the event was “a mistake in judg-
ment,”
caused
by
the
organizational disarray of his
scheduling team and this time he
emphatically denied approving of
EURO’s views. By then, promi-
nent Republicans in Congress had
begun speaking up in his defense,
and Rep. Cedric Richmond, of
New Orleans, Louisiana’s only
Black Democratic Congressman,
vouched for Scalise’s tolerance
and integrity.
By the end of the week, those
elements combined to take the
steam out of the story. After all,
one might also say, given the
GOP’s voluminous recent record
of bigoted comments and actions
against Blacks and Hispanics,
gays and lesbians, undocumented
immigrants, and women, and its
many racist references to Presi-
dent Obama, what’s “new” about a
decade-and-more-old story of a
Deep-South Republican’s trolling
for votes among the nation’s most
racist elements?
But what caught my attention
most about this story was the
largely ignored fact that in 1999
and again in 2004 Steve Scalise as
a state representative was one of a
very few Louisiana state legisla-
tors to vote against establishing a
state holiday honoring Martin
Luther King, Jr.
On those occasions, only three
and six Louisiana state legislators,
respectively, voted against those
proposals. Why at the opening of
the 21st century, after the King
national holiday had been cele-
brated for 15 years, would any
public official be against estab-
lishing an official state holiday?
Doesn’t that call for an explana-
tion? Are those votes the actions
of someone who’s not a bigot?
In all the hullabaloo about
Scalise’s speaking before the
EURO group, his anti-King votes
have been overlooked. But don’t
those votes also raise a question
about the content of Steve
Scalise’s character? Perhaps this
month he’ll find a respectable
forum and give a speech about
that.