This Black Fort Worth doctor cared for a community and was a voice for civil rights.

Dr. Marion Jackson “Jack” Brooks juggled a full plate as a physician, civic leader, and civil rights activist. He was born in Fort Worth in 1920. Brooks’ father was a railroad mail clerk, a secure federal position that provided a stable life for his family.

Brooks graduated from the segregated I. M. Terrell High School cum laude in 1936 and received his undergraduate degree in 1940 from what is now Prairie View A&M University. Drafted in 1942, Brooks entered the Army as a private but left as a first lieutenant. A few months after the war ended, he married Marie Norris – a civic leader in her own right.

In 1947, using his GI Bill benefits, Brooks entered the Howard University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C. He served as class president for three years and completed his internship at Freedmen’s Hospital, Howard’s teaching hospital.

Dr. Brooks returned to Fort Worth with his family in 1952 where he opened a medical practice in the heart of Fort Worth’s African-American business district. Brooks provided medical services to anyone who needed them, regardless of their ability to pay.

He battled for staff status and admitting practice for Fort Worth’s Black physicians at all hospitals in the city. By the mid-1960s, Brooks held that status at all of Fort Worth’s major hospitals. In 1958, he opened the Brooks Clinic with his physician brother Dr. Donald A. Brooks and dentist Dr. Clyde R. Broadus. He practiced there until his retirement in 1996.

Brooks believed that Blacks had proved their innate equality during World War II. That led him to a life of civic activism. It was his obligation, he said, to do whatever the Black community needed because he owed his living to them and could say or do things that others could not because they would lose their jobs.

Locally, Brooks was a co-founder of the Tarrant County Precinct Workers Council, established in 1953, and the Fort Worth Urban League. He addressed the Fort Worth School Board in 1954 advocating immediate implementation of integration in Fort Worth schools. Brooks also led a 1958 action asking the Safeway grocery at 2100 Evans Ave. to hire Black workers and a protest march targeting Leonard’s Department Store that had an impact on the store’s integration.

Brooks was named to the Fort Worth Park Board in 1961, and in 1962 Police Chief Cato Hightower named Brooks to a committee of Black leaders who served as liaisons between the police and the African-American community. Brooks also helped organize and spoke at a civil rights march in Austin held in conjunction with the national March on Washington in 1963.

The Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce planned a breakfast for President John F. Kennedy at the Hotel Texas on Nov. 22, 1963. No Blacks were invited. Brooks was later asked, but refused until 50 other Blacks were invited as well.

In November 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson invited Brooks to participate in the national White House Conference on Health. Brooks was the founding president of the Sickle Cell Anemia Association of Texas in 1971.

Fort Worth proclaimed Dr. Marion “Jack” Brooks Day on Sept. 29, 2002, and he died a few months later on March 3, 2003. The Tarrant County Public Health Department named its main building the Dr. Marion J. Brooks Public Health Building in his memory, a fitting tribute for a man who spent his own life providing health care and advocating for a better life for those who were not born with power and privilege.

Carol Roark is an archivist, historian, and author with a special interest in architectural and photographic history who has written several books on Fort Worth history.

This story was originally published July 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM.