Brooks, Angie (1928—)

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Brooks, Angie (1928—)

Liberian diplomat and lawyer who was president of the 24th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Name variations: Brooks is an anglicized simplification of her father's tribal (Grebo) name. Born Angie Elizabeth Brooks in Virginia, Montserrado County, Liberia, on August 24, 1928; one of nine children of a back-country minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church; attended Shaw University, Raleigh, North Carolina, B.A. in social science, 1949; University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, LL.B and M.Sc. in social science and international relations, 1952; University College law school of London University, 1952–1953; married at 14 (divorced): married Isaac Randolph in Monrovia, Liberia, on April 27, 1970; children: (first marriage) two sons, Wynston and Richard.

In 1969, Angie Brooks, dressed in blue and white robes and a silken turban, took her place at the podium as president of the 24th session of the United Nations General Assembly. The first African woman to serve as assembly president, Brooks, the Liberian delegate for 15 years, was elected overwhelmingly to the post. She did not mince words in her acceptance speech, telling the delegates bluntly that they were a less than dynamic force in the world. Brooks challenged them to "spend less time congratulating each other on so-called diplomatic 'victories' and try more to get their home governments to behave responsibly in the world community."

Angie Brooks was raised in a foster home in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, because her parents were unable to support all nine of their children. Driven to excel despite limited educational opportunities, she was a self-taught typist at age 11 and earned money copying legal documents. Later, she typed for the Treasury Department and worked as a stenotypist for the Justice Department, while setting her sights on the study of law. After high school, she became a law apprentice under Clarence L. Simpson, who later became foreign minister for Liberia. Only with the help of the pastor of her church and her persistent appeals to the president of her country, William V.S. Tubman, was Brooks finally able to get the money to enroll at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. She worked a variety of jobs, from scrubbing floors to washing dishes, and endured her first experiences with discrimination. After graduating in 1949, she went to study law at the University of Wisconsin and later did graduate work in international law at London University.

In 1953, Brooks returned to Liberia and was admitted as a counselor-at-law to the Supreme Court. Hoping to inspire women to enter the field of law, she chose to work in the Justice Department and helped establish a department of law at Liberia University, where she taught from 1954 to 1958. Leaving her post of assistant attorney general in 1958, she was appointed assistant secretary of state by President Tubman. Later that year, the president and secretary of state were out of the country at the same time, and Brooks ran the government for ten days.

Brooks soon turned her attention to Liberia's relations with the world. On a visit to the United States in 1954, she began her long association with the United Nations by filling a vacancy on the Liberian delegation at the last minute. The unexpected assignment led to a continuing role as a delegate as well as to a number of important positions within the United Nations. In addition to her leadership in various committees, she was the first woman and the first African to serve as president of the Trusteeship Council, the UN's watchdog over its trust territories. When the UN presidency, which is shifted to a different geographical area each year, fell to an African delegate, Brooks was not shy about campaigning vigorously for the post. Needing the backing of all 40 member states from her continent, she visited some 23 countries in order to win. Only two other Africans had ever served as president, and only one woman had ever held the position, Madame Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit of India in 1953.

During the 13-week assembly session, Brooks' leadership style combined charm with shrewd diplomacy: "First you must be soft and let it seem they are having their own way. Then you come down hard on them." Using this formula,

she attempted to eliminate idle speechifying and long debates; during one committee meeting, she politely cut off the Soviet Ambassador mid-debate and ordered a vote. Although known to be brash at times, Brooks is also noted for her humility. When she heard she was to be honored by Alpha Kappa Alpha, the black sorority she joined at Shaw University, she asked, "But who else are you honoring?"

In addition to raising her own two sons by a marriage entered into when she was only 14, Brooks raised some 47 foster Liberian boys and girls and put them through school. She has championed the advancement of women, particularly Africans, through the United Nations and the International Federation of Women Lawyers. A Baptist, she worked with various projects of the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission, including supervising a high school in Liberia under their sponsorship.

Aware of the UN's imperfections, Brooks stressed that the organization remains the best means of international cooperation we have: "[W]e have to nurse it and cherish it and cultivate it, or else we shall one day perish and not even the moon or the knowledge of space will save us."