Overton Brooks

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Overton Brooks, 1955

Thomas Overton Brooks (born December 21, 1897 in Baton Rouge , Louisiana , † September 16, 1961 in Bethesda , Maryland ) was an American politician and represented the state of Louisiana as a member of the US House of Representatives .

Career

Thomas Overton Brooks, son of Claude M. Brooks and Penelope Overton, was born on December 21, 1897 in Baton Rouge, where he attended public school. During the First World War he enlisted in the sixth field artillery, first division, regular army. He and his unit served overseas between 1918 and 1919. After the war he made his law degree from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in 1923 . Shortly thereafter, he was admitted to the bar and opened a practice in Shreveport , Caddo Parish . Brooks married Mollie Meriwether of Shreveport on June 1, 1932. She was the daughter of Minor Meriwether and Anne Finley McNutt. They had a child, Laura Anne.

Brooks served on the US House Committee on Armed Services from 1947 to 1958 and became the first chairman of the newly formed House Space Committee (later Science and Astronautics ). He was reinstated in 1961. While little can be said about his presidency, he was known for developing a civil, rather than a military, space program. On May 4, 1961, his committee sent a memo regarding this to Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson . (President John F. Kennedy's famous address that sparked the Apollo program came just a few weeks later.)

Brooks was a veteran advocate while serving on the Armed Services Committee . The Veterans' Medical Center in Shreveport bears his name.

He was also the president of the National River and Harbor Congress and an early proponent of the idea that the southern Red River should be made navigable from Shreveport to Alexandria . His popular successor Joe Waggonner from Plain Dealing , Bossier Parish , continued this work.

politics

Brooks was elected to Congress twelve times. He signed the Southern Manifesto , a failed congressional attempt to stop desegregation in public schools. In 1956 he defeated (68-32 percent) the nominee Republican Calhoun Allen , who later joined the Democrats and was elected as Shreveport's public energy commissioner (1962-1970), as well as their mayor (1970-1978). Brooks declared himself a lifelong Democrat in the campaign and urged voters to support Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois through this year's Louisiana election for the presidency. Allen had previously referred to himself as an "Eisenhower Republican".

In Brook's last tenure in 1960, he defeated his Republican challenger Fred C. McClanahan (1918-2007) from Shreveport with a 74 to 26 percent majority. McClanahan was originally from Little Rock , Arkansas , but grew up in Homer , Louisiana, graduated from Centenary College in Louisiana, and had a notable list of World War II awards . In 1961 Brooks agreed to increase the number of seats on the House Rules Committee , Speaker of the House Samuel Taliaferro Rayburn , to appoint new MPs. With this controversial vote, Waggonner announced that he would challenge Brooks in the 1962 Democratic primary.

Last years

Brooks death, however, produced Wagonner as a new MP in the extraordinary election. Wagonner was stronger than ordinary Republican challengers against Charlton Lyons (1894–1973), a Shreveport oil industrialist. Waggonner still won with 54 percent of the vote. He has triumphed in almost every parish except Lyons' Caddo Parish.

Brooks was a member of the Masonic Masonic Lodge, the Shriners , the Elks, American Legion , the War Veterans, and the Kiwanis Club. Brooks died of a heart attack at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. He was buried in the Forest Park Cemetery in Shreveport. He was an Episcopian .

swell

• Overton Brooks in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Shreveport Times , September 17, 1961
• Ken Hechler, The Endless Space Frontier. A History of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 1959–1978 (Univelt, 1982) ISBN 0-87703-157-6 (hardback), ISBN 0-87703-158-4 (paperback)
• "Overton Brooks," A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography , Vol. 1 (1988)
• Thomas Overton Brooks of Shreveport Times

Web links

• Overton Brooks in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)