Edward Brooke was the first African American to be elected to the United States Senate. He rose to national prominence as an attorney during World War II, serving in the Army Air Force. He was elected Massachusetts Attorney General in 1950 and defeated incumbent Senator Estes Kefauver in his bid for the U.S. Senate in 1954
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He was sworn in as Senator on January 3, 1957. While serving as Senator, he continued his legal career as a senior partner of a Boston law firm, which he had founded with another former chief justice of the state's supreme court, Charles F. Murphy.
In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to replace John Marshall Butler as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, making him the first African American to serve on that court. He served until he resigned from the bench on April 28, 1965, to assume a seat on the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the First Circuit , where he served until his death from cancer on April 19, 1992 at age 72.