Nation: The Senate: An Individual Who Happens To Be a Negro

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Remigia, now 47, has snapping brown eyes and a husky Italian laugh. She calls her husband "Carlo," his code name with the partisans. She herself has fought a long guerrilla campaign with the English language, but the conflict has been resolved in what can only be described as peaceful and rather charming coexistence. "If you with me a little while," she says, "you notice that I speak almost all the time in the present sentence. My accent, I think I never lose that, because I think I have no accent." She has made dozens of engaging campaign appearances for Ed, helped harvest the Italian vote for him. Remigia and their daughters, Remi, 17, and Edwina, 14, will stay in Newton for the time being while the Senator commutes there weekends. Although she loves meeting people, Remigia has a knack for mangling their last names (Dirksen becomes "Dirdis" or "Kirkenson"). Recently she confided her problem to a dinner partner, Vice President Humphrey, who astutely advised her: "Just call them 'Honey' or 'Sweetie.' " Vote White. Until he was 30 years old, Ed Brooke never even voted. Then in 1950, several friends suggested that he run for the Massachusetts legislature. When he told Remigia that he planned to become a candidate, she cried for a week, as she now recalls—largely because her notion of politics was based on memories of Mussolini-era Italian politicians, who were often jailed or murdered. Brooke entered both the Republican and Democratic primaries, won the G.O.P. endorsement, and has stuck with the party ever since.

He was defeated in the 1950 general election, and again in 1952, then renounced politics (partly, his friends say, because of campaign slurs about his interracial marriage) until 1960, when Republicans persuaded him to run for secretary of state. His opponent was an affable, able politician named Kevin White, and while the campaign was generally free of racial smears, one slogan that popped up—VOTE WHITE—carried an innuendo that was hard to ignore. Brooke lost narrowly.

Intrigued now by the challenge of politics, Brooke rejected an offer to join Governor John Volpe's staff, instead asked to be appointed chairman of the Boston Finance Commission, a municipal watchdog group that had not barked in years. Brooke drew headline after headline as commission evidence led to the dismissal of some city officials.

Bolstered by his reputation as a crusader, Brooke won the G.O.P. nomination for attorney general in 1962, easily defeated a Democratic machine candidate, who was picked for the race only because the incumbent, Edward McCormack, was locked in a senatorial primary fight with Teddy Kennedy.