Jack Bascom Brooks (December 18, 1922December 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 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 in Lamar Junior College in 1939 after receiving a scholarship. After completing two years at Lamar, he transferred to the University of Texas at Austin, from which he earned a Bachelor of Arts in journalism in 1943. 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, Okinawa, and in North China, attaining the rank of first lieutenant. Afterward, he remained active in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, retiring in 1972 at the rank of colonel. Political career Texas legislature A lifelong Democrat, Brooks was elected in 1946 to represent Jefferson County in the Texas House of Representatives. After his election he sponsored a bill that would make Lamar Junior College a four-year institution. The bill initially failed, but passed the following year. He won re-election to the state legislature in 1948 without opposition; the following year he earned a law degree from the University of Texas Law School. U.S. Congress After four years in the Texas legislature, Brooks won a crowded 12-candidate Democratic primary and then was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1952 election. A protégé of fellow Texans, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn and then-U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, Brooks showed himself to be a conservative on some issues like the death penalty and gun control, but more liberal on issues like domestic spending, labor, and civil rights. In 1956, he refused to sign the Southern Manifesto that opposed racial integration in public places. Brooks voted against the Civil Rights Acts of 1957