[1][3] After graduating from Payne, he received early assignments as a minister at various churches in Kansas including a stint in Topeka.
This was around the time of the groundbreaking U.S. Supreme Court Case Brown vs. Board of Education which challenged the doctrine of “separate but equal” in Topeka's public schools.
[1] As the first Black president of an interracial ministerial council in Wichita, Kansas, he helped make court-ordered school desegregation a reality.
[2][3][4] When Brookins announced his plans to build a new church, even members of his own congregation expressed doubts that it could come to fruition.
His efforts were aided considerablely by philanthropist John Factor, who was introduced to him by James Roosevelt in appreciation of his help during his unsuccessful campaign for Mayor of Los Angeles in 1965.
[2] In the early 1960s, he organized Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s first visit to Los Angeles which drew a crowd of over 60,000 people.
In 1961, when a White person,Joe E. Hollingsworth was appointed to fill a vacancy in the 10th district of the Los Angeles City Council over sixteen Black candidates (including Tom Bradley), in one of the mot heavily Black districts in the city, Brookins organized an unsuccessful recall campaign.