Jack Bascom Brooks (December 18, 1922 – December 4, 2012) was an American Democratic Party politician from the state of Texas who served 42 years in the United States House of Representatives, initially representing from 1953 through 1967, and then, after district boundaries were redrawn in 1966, the from 1967 to 1995. He had strong political ties to other prominent Texas Democrats, including Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn and President Lyndon B. Johnson. For over fifteen years, he was the dean of the Texas congressional delegation.

Early life

Brooks was born in Crowley, Louisiana, on December 18, 1922, and moved to Beaumont, Texas, at age5 with his family. When he was 13 his father, a rice salesman, died and among the jobs young Brooks took on were as a carhop and a newspaper reporter. He enrolled at Lamar Junior College in 1939 after receiving a scholarship.

Military service

Brooks enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II. He served for about two years on the Pacific islands of Guadalcanal, Guam, and Okinawa, and in North China,

A protégé of fellow Texans, House Speaker Sam Rayburn and then-U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, Brooks voted against the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, but voted in favor of the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As a member of the House Judiciary Committee, he helped to write the 1964 and 1965 bills.

On November 22, 1963, Brooks was in President John F. Kennedy's motorcade in Dallas at the time Kennedy was assassinated.

The 2nd was redistricted as the in 1966, after the Supreme Court ruled in Wesberry v. Sanders that congressional district populations had to be equal or close to equal in population.

One of Brooks's signature bills required competitive bidding for federal computing contracts. Initially conceived in the mid-1960s and enacted into law in 1972, the Brooks Act was the primary rule for all federal computer acquisitions for three decades, and is often cited as being a catalyst for technological advances.

As a member of the House Judiciary Committee, Brooks participated in the 1973–74 impeachment process against Richard Nixon. In mid-July 1974 he drafted and distributed to all members of the committee a strongly-worded set of articles of impeachment. Uncompromising though they were, the Brooks proposals provided others on the committee with an opportunity to meld their thoughts together and to further develop, thus serving as the foundation for the articles of impeachment that the committee subsequently adopted. Because of the part he played in the president's downfall, Nixon later called Brooks his "executioner". In 1979, he became the senior member of the Texas congressional delegation, a position which he maintained for fifteen years.

Brooks served twice as a House impeachment manager, being among the House impeachment managers that successfully prosecuted the cases against federal judges Alcee Hastings and Walter Nixon in their 1989 impeachment trials.

While chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Brooks sponsored the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1991, and the Civil Rights Act of 1991. He was also a sponsor of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, a measure which eventually came to include a ban on assault weapons (the inclusion of which he opposed).

Brooks won re-election in the 1992 election, comfortably defeating his Republican opponent Steve Stockman. However, two years later, in 1994, the 21-term incumbent unexpectedly lost to Stockman, becoming the most senior representative ever to be unseated in a general election, a distinction Brooks still holds as of . His tenure had extended across the administrations of 10 U.S. presidents,

  • A Galveston County park in Hitchcock is named Jack Brooks Park.
  • In 1989, a statue of Brooks was placed in the quadrangle at Lamar University in Beaumont.
  • In 2001, NASA presented its Distinguished Service Medal to Brooks at a ceremony in the John Gray Center of Lamar University. NASA Admin. Daniel Goldin cited Brooks's long-standing support of the U.S. space program and his role in "strengthening the agency during its formative years". Goldin said "Congressman Brooks took it upon himself to personally deliver support to one of the agency's key programs: the design, development, and on-orbit assembly of the International Space Station."
  • In 2010, the Southeast Texas Regional Airport was renamed Jack Brooks Regional Airport in Brooks's honor.