Edward Brooke

(Newser) - The first African American elected to the US Senate has died at age 95. Edward Brooke, a Massachusetts Republican, died of natural causes in Florida, the AP reports. He was elected in 1966 and served two terms as a highly popular politician. That came after he became the first African...

(Newser) - Scott Brown scored an enormous Republican upset today, winning the Massachusetts US Senate seat long held by the late Ted Kennedy by a 52%-47% margin over Democrat Martha Coakley. The loss sunders the Democrats’ filibuster-proof, 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, and throws into doubt the future of health-care reform—along...

(Newser) - Hundreds of people packed into the Capitol Rotunda yesterday to honor Edward Brooke, the Massachusetts politician who in 1967 became the first black senator since Reconstruction. Now 90, Brooke was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the legislature's highest honor. Sitting to his right was another trailblazer—President Obama, who had...

(Newser) - Barbara Walters has revealed she had a long affair in the 1970s with Edward Brooke, America’s first elected black senator. In a bombshell admission on a forthcoming episode of Oprah, the grande dame of TV anchors says the married Brooke—a moderate Massachusetts Republican who served in 1967-79—was...