The Rev. John I. Brooks, the president with more seniority in the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and as a teacher in the days after the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. set out on a mission that led to the integration than it was all-male institution and almost all white, died Monday in Worcester. He was 88.
The cause was complications of lymphoma, said Ellen Ryder, a spokesman for the university.
On April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King was assassinated in 2200 less than a dozen students from Holy Cross were African Americans, most of them on athletic scholarships.
That month, the father of Brooks, professor of theology, he began to go up and down the East Coast in search of qualified students from high schools to recruit blacks in college, the Jesuits were founded in 1843.
Initially it was his own, paying their expenses. But support quickly followed when the Rev. Raymond J. Swords, president of the university when he learned of his research.
Among the 20 students this year were recruited Father Brooks Clarence Thomas, Judge of the future partner of the United States Supreme Court, Edward P. Jones, who won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Theodore Wells, who became a successful lawyer, Ed Jr. and Jenkins, wearing a Super Bowl ring, won as a player for the team undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins, before going on to become director of the civil rights of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.
In an interview last month with The Telegram & Gazette of Worcester, the father of Brooks asked if he had never imagined that so many students involved would become a success. "They have done marvelously well," he said. "I could not do better. Both were brilliant or lucky. I do not know why."
Two years after the start of his campaign integration, the father of Brooks 29 Santa Cruz became president, succeeding Father Swords. Within a year take place, he would keep for 24 years, the father of Brooks announced that the College would admit women. In the autumn of 1972, approximately 300 units of the student body.
Of the more than 2,800 students currently enrolled at Santa Cruz, more than half are women and nearly 25 percent are minority members.
"Even among the Jesuits, an order progressive, intellectual, and generally represent the church, John Brooks noted," wrote Diane Brady, BusinessWeek editor in chief of Bloomberg, the "Brotherhood", the account of their campaign integration, published this year.
"Although many teachers and priests of the Holy Cross has welcomed the change, as Brooks was difficult to drive this process."
In 1990, Holy Cross and Brandeis University, which has a largely Jewish student body, united in the creation of an endowed chair in each school to promote understanding among students of both religions. "This is an opportunity to take us further along the road to reduce discrimination," said the father of Brooks at the time.
"The vision of the Holy Cross is that the Catholic community in general does not understand our spiritual heritage shared with the Jewish community."
John Edward Brooks was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, July 13, 1923, the eldest of four children of John and Mildred Brooks. His father worked for the telephone company.
The young John was admitted to the Holy Cross in 1942 but joined the army a year later and served in the body's signal to Europe. His academic interests departs from theological scientists.
Immediately after graduating from Holy Cross in 1949 with a degree in physics, joined the Jesuits. After obtaining an MA in philosophy at Boston College in 1954, he returned to Holy Cross as an instructor of mathematics and physics.
After he earned a master's degree in geophysics from Boston University and a doctorate in Sacred Theology at the Gregorian University in Rome.
P. Brooks, who was ordained in 1959, he returned to Santa Cruz, a professor in the department of religious studies and was president from 1964 until being named president.
He is survived by her sisters, Mildred and Marion Brooks, and his brother, Paul.
Father Brooks not only convince young blacks to attend the Holy Cross, Mrs. Brady wrote in "fraternity", but also organized by the university that provides scholarships, and mentor and defended through the years universities are often difficult.
By Clarence Thomas wrote, the father of Brooks, "was a combination of friend, uncle, priest, father, holy and good Samaritan." He cited Judge Thomas: ". I was not part of a program of Father Brooks .... They were symbols of what we were just kids."
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