Background
Thomas Overton Brooks was born on December 21, 1897 in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, the son of Claude M. Brooks and Penelope Overton.
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(The Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records and ...)
The Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978 contains the world's most comprehensive collection of records and briefs brought before the nation's highest court by leading legal practitioners - many who later became judges and associates of the court. It includes transcripts, applications for review, motions, petitions, supplements and other official papers of the most-studied and talked-about cases, including many that resulted in landmark decisions. This collection serves the needs of students and researchers in American legal history, politics, society and government, as well as practicing attorneys. This book contains copies of all known US Supreme Court filings related to this case including any transcripts of record, briefs, petitions, motions, jurisdictional statements, and memorandum filed. This book does not contain the Court's opinion. The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping ensure edition identification: Northern Trust Co of Chicago v. Edenborn Petition / T OVERTON BROOKS / 1938 / 602 / 306 U.S. 643 / 59 S.Ct. 583 / 83 L.Ed. 1043 / 1-18-1939 Northern Trust Co of Chicago v. Edenborn Brief in Opposition (P) / R E MILLING / 1938 / 602 / 306 U.S. 643 / 59 S.Ct. 583 / 83 L.Ed. 1043 / 2-8-1939
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Thomas Overton Brooks was born on December 21, 1897 in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, the son of Claude M. Brooks and Penelope Overton.
Thomas Brooks graduated from the parish high school and in 1918 enlisted in the Sixth Field Artillery of the First Regular Army Division.
Brooks entered Louisiana State University law school in 1919 and received the LL. B. degree in 1923.
After only a month's basic training at the First Regular Army Division Thomas Brooks was sent overseas as a private. In France he won two battle stars and promotion to sergeant.
After graduation from the Louisiana State University law school he then passed the bar examination and entered practice in Shreveport, Louisiana.
For a decade beginning in 1925, Brooks served as United States commissioner in Louisiana. He served in Congress for twenty-six years. His first assignment was to the House Military Affairs Committee (later the Armed Services Committee), on which he served for the rest of his life. Brooks was ambivalent with regard to American neutrality before the nation's entry into World War II.
He maintained in October 1939 that Americans should not travel on belligerent ships, yet a month later he voted against the continuance of the embargo on the shipment of arms on American vessels. He also supported the lend-lease bill (1941).
Brooks's voting record was decidedly antilabor. In 1940 he favored drastic amendments to the National Labor Relations Act. He voted for the Smith antistrike bill in 1941 and to override President Franklin D. Roosevelt's veto of a modified Smith bill in 1943.
In 1947 he voted to override President Harry S. Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act and in 1952 voted in favor of invoking that act to halt the steel strike.
In 1950 he opposed the voluntary fair employment practices bill. After a visit to France in 1944, Brooks declared that Congress must soon take up the question of training reserves for postwar police duty. He supported compulsory military training and in 1946 introduced a universal military training bill that failed but was reintroduced in 1947 after President Truman advocated a similar plan.
In 1951 he introduced a bill creating within each of the services the categories of "ready, standby, and retired reserve, " subject to recall to duty in that order.
The following year he urged retroactive extra combat pay for ground troops in Korea. In 1955 Brooks chaired an armed services subcommittee that studied and approved an administration bill to provide a military reserve of 2. 9 million men by 1960, manned partly by volunteers and partly by draftees.
The question of the reserves arose again in 1957, when Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson charged that the National Guard had been a "haven for draft dodgers" during the Korean War and the army announced that beginning on April 1 of that year, persons joining the National Guard would be required to undergo the six-month training required of the army reserve recruits. The guard contended that compulsory six-month basic training would reduce enlistments and argued for an eleven-week summer training program instead. Brooks personally negotiated a compromise.
The army agreed to postpone its mandatory six-month training order until January 1, 1958, for National Guard recruits aged seventeen to eighteen and a half. This allowed the guard to recruit men under eighteen and a half for eleven weeks of summer training.
In 1956 he supported the upper Colorado River development project and urged federal appropriations for rainmaking experiments and the conversion of seawater to fresh water.
Following the death of his uncle, Senator John Holmes Overton, in 1948, Brooks briefly became a candidate to complete the unexpired term.
He withdrew when Russell Long announced his interest in the position. A staunch advocate of federal assistance to farmers, Brooks suggested, after a 1947 visit to Europe, that the United States "lend" cotton and wool to European nations for the rehabilitation of their textile industries.
He died at Bethesda, Maryland and was interred at Forest Park Cemetery East in Shreveport, the resting place of many Shreveport politicians.
(The Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records and ...)
In his religious affiliation he was Episcopalian.
In 1937, Brooks was elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-fifth Congress and to the next twelve succeeding Congresses, serving until his death. An admirer of Senator Huey P. Long, Brooks entered the 1936 Democratic primary for the Fourth Louisiana Congressional District seat formerly occupied by John N. Sandlin, who sought to fill the Senate seat left vacant by Long's assassination in 1935.
In 1956 he was the only House Democrat to support a Republican-sponsored amendment to the omnibus farm bill that allowed prepayment to farmers in connection with the proposed soil bank. Brooks was a typical southern conservative in his voting as well as in his dress and demeanor. He rarely spoke on the floor of Congress.
Brooks was a member of the Masonic Lodge, the Shriners, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Kiwanis International.
His manner was quiet and sincere, and he impressed observers with his industry and knowledge of his specialty areas.
Quotes from others about the person
Former Shreveport Mayor James C. Gardner of Shreveport, who at the time lived only two blocks from Brooks, said in his memoirs that he believes Brooks' death was "largely a result of the strain that he experienced from the Rules Committee vote. The party had demanded a vote that had a large and vocal opposition among the congressman's constituents. "
On June 1, 1933, he married Mollie Meriwether; they had one daughter.