Ross Bass (March 17, 1918 – January 1, 1993) was an American Congressman and United States Senator from Tennessee.

[1] He joined the United States Army Air Forces and served as a bombardier in Europe during World War II, reaching the rank of captain.

Bass signed onto the 1956 anti-desegregation Southern Manifesto,[2] but was the only Democratic Representative from the rural South to vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

[3] The only other Southern Representatives to vote for the bill were from large cities—Richard Fulton from Nashville, Tennessee, Charles Weltner from Atlanta, Georgia, Claude Pepper from Miami, Florida and four Representatives from Texas (Jack Brooks, Henry B. Gonzalez, J. J. Pickle and Albert Thomas).

Governor Frank G. Clement made no secret that he wanted to run in the special election due in 1964 for the final two years of Kefauver's term.

Much of this area was located in suburban territory near Memphis and Nashville that had turned heavily Republican, at least at the national level.

After his divorce in 1979, he moved to Florida, where he lived in Miami Shores until his death from lung cancer in 1993, aged 74.