Edward Brooke Loses Senate Re-Election, Reducing Black Senate Representation to Zero

Republican Senator Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts, the first Black person popularly elected to the U.S. Senate, lost his re-election bid to Democrat Paul Tsongas in November 1978. No Black senator would serve in the Senate until Carol Moseley Braun's election in 1992, reflecting structural barriers to Black representation in the nation's highest legislative body.