Dynamic Public Speaker. Lifelong Civil Rights Worker. Servant of the People. These powerful labels are frequently used to describe one of the most dedicated, hard-working and energetic legislators in the history of the Georgia General Assembly. He is also known around the world as the man who brought down the racist Georgia Confederate flag.

Representative Tyrone Brooks was born on October 10, 1945 to Ruby and Mose Brooks in Warrenton, Georgia, where he was raised and educated in the public school system. He received further education at Boggs Academy, Keysville, Georgia; Lassalle Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Howard University, Washington, D. C.; Atlanta University; and The Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In May of 200 the John Marshall School of Law bestowed on him his first honorary degree of Doctor of Jurisprudence.

Currently, he represents the 47th District in the Georgia House of Representatives, where he serves his Fulton County constituents as a member of three committees: Appropriations (Secretary), Economic Development and Tourism and Retirement. He is a member of the special Policy Committee and serves on the Green Door Budget Subcommittee. Rep. Brooks is also a respected businessman and international ambassador of goodwill, who is a frequently requested lecturer and public speaker.

Tyrone Brooks began his career in public service as an activist for civil and human rights at the age of fifteen when he began working as a volunteer with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He was hired by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on a full-time basis in 1967. During his 19 years with the organization, Rep. Brooks held five full-time and several volunteer positions. Under the leadership of former president the late Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, Rep. Brooks served as national Communications Director, National Field Director, and special assistant to the president. He served under three national presidents – King, Abernathy, and Dr. Joseph E. Lowery. On the local level, he served as Executive Director of the Atlanta Chapter of SCLC under the leadership of Rev. Hosea Williams as chapter president. Although, Rep. Brooks left SCLC on a full-time basis in 1979, he has remained at the forefront of the struggle for freedom, justice, and equality. He has been involved in every major civil rights project since 1960, and has been arrested and jailed 65 times for civil rights work.

In 1979 Tyrone Brooks was elected national president of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Movement. As a result of his continuous commitment to uplifting the quality of life for all people, in 1980 he was drafted by a bipartisan coalition of Civil Rights Ministers and community leaders (led by Rev. Abernathy and Rev. Joe Boone) to serve the people of Georgia in the General Assembly. He was originally elected to represent District 34 which was reapportioned in 1990 as district 54 and is presently District 47 in Southwest Atlanta.

During his tenure in the Georgia House of Representatives Tyrone Brooks has consistently created and supported legislation to help the poor and oppressed people in our society, and to eradicate racism, sexism, illiteracy, and injustice. In 1981, Rep. Brooks helped pass the charitable solicitations law which upgraded the state statute of charitable solicitations. This law gives greater protection to organizations such as the United Way, NAACP, and church affiliated organizations. His other accomplishments have included passing the Anti-terrorism law; establishing the Positive Employment and Community Help (PEACH) Program; leading the movement to reactivate the small municipality of Keysville, Georgia; serving as lead plaintiff in a suit to increase the number of African-American judges in Georgia; and fighting for more African-American business contracts and a more equitable distribution of Georgia’s multi-billion dollar annual state budget. He served as lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the state of Georgia to eliminate the discriminatory majority vote run off system, enacted in 1964 to prevent African-Americans from winning public office.

Rep. Brooks was co-author of the Reapportionment Max Black Plan to create more majority black districts which resulted in the election of three African-Americans to Congress and 44 to seats in the Georgia General Assembly. Rep. Brooks was instrumental in the election of Cynthia McKinney, the first black woman from Georgia to serve in United States Congress. With the passage of his House Bill 16 in the House (94-82) and Senate (34-22), he recently won an almost twenty-year battle in the General Assembly to change the Georgia State Flag.

Tyrone Brooks is an active member of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus (GLBC), at one time serving as chairman of the Issues and Outreach Committee. He currently serves as president of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials (GABEO) which includes over 800 members who hold elected offices on the municipal, county, state, and national levels throughout Georgia. As president of GABEO, he is leading the movement to solve the Moore’s Ford lynching case of four African-Americans in Monroe, Walton County, Georgia. This was the last public mass lynching case in America.

Rep. Brooks is co-founder of the Coalition for the People’s Agenda, and serves on the organization’s steering committee. He has also agreed to another appointment on the Martin Luther King, Jr. State Holiday Commission after first serving during the administration of Governor Joe Frank Harris in 1984.

Tyrone Brooks is also active in many other organizations. He continues to cultivate and maintain a global outlook. His international outreach includes meeting hundreds of foreign visitors each year to discuss his work in the legislature as well as civil rights. He has dedicated his life to the achievement of complete justice and equality. He will never leave the struggle because in his own words “activism is a lifetime commitment.”