Thomas Overton Brooks (December 21, 1897 – September 16, 1961)[1] was a Democratic U.S. representative from the Shreveport-based Fourth Congressional District of northwestern Louisiana, having served for a quarter century beginning on January 3, 1937.

[citation needed] Brooks faced a showdown with Henry Andrew O'Neal, a Shreveport insurance agent originally from Linden in Cass County, Texas.

In 1956, he signed the Southern Manifesto, a failed congressional attempt to block desegregation of public schools ordered by the United States Supreme Court in the case Brown v. Board of Education.

[8][9] In Brooks' last election to Congress in 1960, he faced another Republican challenger, Fred Charles McClanahan Jr. (1918–2007), a contractor from Shreveport who was reared in Homer in Claiborne Parish.

McClanahan flew sixty-eight combat missions in World War II and received the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal, and the Purple Heart.

[11] The Overton Brooks Veterans Administration Medical Center at 510 East Stoner Street in Shreveport south of Interstate 20 and viewed from along the Clyde Fant Parkway is named in his honor.

[12] Two conservative legislative assistants to Representative Brooks, Ned Touchstone and Billy McCormack,[13] went on to careers of their own in advocacy journalism and the Christian ministry.

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.