First African-American senator gets highest congressional honor

Washington - Edward William Brooke, the first African- American popularly elected to the US Senate, was given Congress' highest award on Wednesday. President Barack Obama, who broke the highest glass ceiling for African Americans by capturing the presidency last year, said it was Brooke who blazed a trail that he and other black politicians followed.

Brooke, 90, was "a man who has spent his life breaking barriers and bridging divides across this country," Obama said at a ceremony awarding him the Congressional Gold Medal on Capitol Hill.

Brooke, who grew up in an era of segregation in Washington, was elected to the Senate in 1966 by Massachusetts voters and remained in the chamber until 1975. A Republican, Brooke earlier served as Massachusetts' first African American attorney general.

Former president George W Bush in 2004 awarded Brooke the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor.

Brooke spent much of his Senate career seeking more equality for minorities in the United States, but he was also respected for taking a moderate approach that sometimes put him at odds with other African-American politicians.

Brooke declined to join the Congressional Black Caucus when it was founded in 1971. But he was instrumental in convincing his Senate colleagues to designate Martin Luther King Jr's birthday a national holiday, after the civil rights leader's assassination in 1968.