Norton Speaks at Funeral Service for Native Son, Senator Edward Brooke

*Watch the Full Memorial Service (Norton's remarks begin at 27:20)*

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today released Norton's remarks from today's funeral service of former Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke, the nation's first popularly elected African American senator and a native son of the District of Columbia.

Norton's remarks follow:

Remarks of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Nortonat the Funeral of Edward Brooke

Washington National Cathedral

March 10, 2015

Anne, family, colleagues, public officials, friends all of Senator Eward William Brooke.

You do not grow up desiring to be a United States Senator if you were born in the District of Columbia in 1919; not if you lived in one of the District's African American communities, LeDroit Park; not if you went to our segregated public schools and graduated from Dunbar High School, and the Senator's class of 1936 is in the church today, and from Howard University; not even if you became a World War II hero and won the Bronze Star, leading your segregated unit in a broad daylight attack on an enemy bunker; and certainly not if your hometown had no elected self-government, much less senators.

Edward William Brooke was nurtured in a loving, closely knit, aspiring African American community in the District of Columbia. But it did not groom him to think of himself as a public official.

Senator Brooke owed much to a childhood spent in our city where children were raised to believe segregation did not for a moment mean you were inferior. But the man that became a natural politician, charismatic, charming, brilliant, and utterly approachable, invented himself and went on to become not only a public official, but a historic figure.

The Senate has always had its share of self-made men and women. Edward Brooke was a self-made senator. Many had thought of Barack Obama as a man ahead of his time, until the President came to the Capitol in 2009 to present the Congressional Gold Medal to Senator Brooke. After receiving the medal, Senator Brooke regaled us with remarks that must have been written in his head and his heart, because without so much as a note, he accepted the medal in a voice that resonated as it must have when he spoke in the Senate about the Brooke Amendment to the Fair Housing Act, which limited to 25% the portion of income a family must pay in rent for public housing.

Don't ask me how a black man without guide posts became one of the most popular politicians ever in Massachusetts, a state where only 2% of the population was black. I cannot explain the conundrum that was Edward Brooke. But I experienced the warmth and the talent that made him successful as a public man and dear as a friend. And I can tell you this: Edward Brooke never forgot where he came from, the city that nurtured his uniqueness. Without hesitation, he volunteered to talk with senators in his Republican Party when the Senate and the House both passed the D.C. House Voting Rights Act. He succeeded. The vote for the District was lost to an amendment that would have wiped out all of the District's gun laws in return for a vote in the People's House.

Senator Brooke's place in American history was sealed and delivered long before he died in January. His place as the first African American elected to the Senate with the popular vote and his extraordinary record as a senator are even more remarkable when you consider his origins here in the District of Columbia, which had no local government at all. The residents of his hometown continue to struggle for equal rights as American citizens and for statehood. But nothing could inspire our citizens more than a native son, born in a city without a vote or a local public official, who rose to cast votes in the Senate of the United States.

Thank you.