These male Black celebrities were diagnosed with breast cancer

Sen. Edward W. Brooke

Edward Brooke became the first African-American elected to the Senate. He was diagnosed with breast cancer in September of 2002.

Originally, he assumed that the pain he was experiencing beneath his right nipple was just a pulled muscle from gardening.

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After undergoing a double mastectomy and he was declared cancer-free until his death in January 2015. He died at age 95.

“I fear that there are a lot of men who get breast cancer who just go into general denial and don’t go to a doctor,” he said in an interview in 2003.  “It was worth invading my own privacy to go public with this appeal.”