Brooks was born in Evansville, Indiana to Samuel Leon (a tool and die maker and singer) and Eva Lydia Crawford (a pianist, organist, and choir director). At age eight, his family later moved to Gary, Indiana when Samuel Brooks was laid off from International Harvester. Of Gary, Brooks has said "I was born in Evansville ... but it was Gary, Indiana, that made me" (Gary Civic Celebration; Nov. 2006).
The Brooks household was filled with music. His mother, who was among the first African-American women to earn a master's degree in music at Northwestern University, taught music wherever the family lived. His father was in the choir Wings Over Jordan on CBS radio from 1937 to 1947 and his maternal uncle Samuel Travis Crawford, was a member of the Delta Rhythm Boys. "Music is all around me and in me, as I am in it", Brooks has said.
Brooks attended Indiana University and Oberlin College and later received a B.A. and M.F.A. from Rutgers University in 1976, becoming the first African-American to receive an MFA in acting and directing from Rutgers.
Brooks has been a tenured professor of theatre at the Mason Gross School of the Arts of Rutgers University for more than three decades. He has also taught at Oberlin College and Case Western Reserve University.
A deep baritone singer, Brooks has performed on stage with Butch Morris, Lester Bowie, and Jon Hendricks. He also recorded an album with saxophone player James Spaulding as a tribute to Duke Ellington. Brooks had the lead role in the 1985 Anthony Davis opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. More recently, he performed at the Paris Banlieues Bleues Festival in 2005.
Brooks received critical acclaim in Phillip Hayes Dean's play Paul Robeson. Brooks paid tribute to his culture by portraying the life of the famous singer, actor, and civil rights activist in a one-man, critically-acclaimed biographical drama. He has performed the role since 1982 at the Westwood Playhouse in Los Angeles, and also at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and the Longacre Theater on Broadway. He also portrayed Robeson in "Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?," both on and off-Broadway.
Brooks' early theater credits include The Offering, A PHOTOGRAPH: A Study of Cruelty, and Are You Now or Have You Ever Been in the 1970s. He first started to gain recognition after his appearance in Spell #7 at the Public/Anspache Theater in New York City in 1979. He subsequently starred in Othello at the Folger Shakespeare Festival (1985) and Fences at the Repertory Theater of St. Louis, Missouri (1990). He reprised the role of Othello at the Washington Shakespeare Theater in 1990-1991, where he set the town on its ear by appearing fully nude for the first scene. It was not done for a man to be nude on stage even though he never once stood up.
More recently, Brooks appeared in the title role of The Oedipus Plays, a production that traveled to the 2003 Athens Festival in Greece. He also appeared in the title role of King Lear at Yale's Repertory Theatre. In 2005, Brooks again starred as Othello, this time at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in a production directed by the renowned Michael Kahn. Brooks was one of 15 Shakespeare Theatre Company company actors in Washington to be honored with the William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre in 2007.[4] He returned to the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Fall 2007 to play the title role in Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine.
In 1985, Brooks landed the role of Hawk on the ABC television detective series Spenser: For Hire. Hawk became a popular character and, after four seasons, Brooks in 1989 received his own, short-lived spinoff series, A Man Called Hawk .
Brooks is best known in popular culture for his role as Captain Benjamin Sisko on the science fiction television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which ran for seven seasons from 1993 to 1999.
Since 1976 Brooks has been married to Vicki Lenora, an assistant dean at Rutgers University where she has worked for more than 30 years. The couple have three children: Ayana, Cabral, and Asante. He is also a distant cousin of Rev. Adrian M. Brooks, Sr., Senior Pastor of Memorial Baptist Church in Evansville, Indiana.
