Ross Bass (March 17, 1918January 1, 1993) was an American
Congressman
A Member of Congress (MOC) is a person who has been appointed or elected and inducted into an official body called a congress, typically to represent a particular constituency in a legislature. The term member of parliament (MP) is an equivalen ...
and
United States Senator
The United States Senate is the Upper house, upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives being the Lower house, lower chamber. Together they compose the national Bica ...
from
Tennessee
Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...
Methodist
Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...
public school
Public school may refer to:
* State school (known as a public school in many countries), a no-fee school, publicly funded and operated by the government
* Public school (United Kingdom), certain elite fee-charging independent schools in England an ...
United States Army Air Forces
The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, reaching the rank of captain. After his 1945 discharge Bass opened a
flower shop
Floristry is the production, commerce, and trade in flowers. It encompasses flower care and handling, floral design and arrangement, merchandising, production, display and flower delivery. Wholesale florists sell bulk flowers and related sup ...
in Pulaski, the
county seat
A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is in use in Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, Taiwan, and the United States. The equivalent term shire town is used in the US st ...
. He was named
postmaster
A postmaster is the head of an individual post office, responsible for all postal activities in a specific post office. When a postmaster is responsible for an entire mail distribution organization (usually sponsored by a national government), ...
of Pulaski in 1946, serving until 1954."Ross Bass, Ex-Senator; Tennessean Was 75" ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
U.S. Congressman
The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...
from Tennessee's 6th District, which included Pulaski. He was reelected four times. Having declined to sign the 1956 anti-desegregation
Southern Manifesto
The Declaration of Constitutional Principles (known informally as the Southern Manifesto) was a document written in February and March 1956, during the 84th United States Congress, in opposition to racial integration of public places. The manife ...
, Bass was the only Democratic Representative from the rural
South
South is one of the cardinal directions or Points of the compass, compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west.
Etymology
The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Pro ...
to vote for the
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...
. The only other Southern Representatives to vote for the bill were from large cities—
Richard Fulton
Richard Harmon Fulton (January 27, 1927 – November 28, 2018) was an American Democratic politician who served as a member of the Tennessee State Senate and of the United States House of Representatives, and the second mayor of the Metropolita ...
from
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the List of muni ...
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
,
Claude Pepper
Claude Denson Pepper (September 8, 1900 – May 30, 1989) was an American politician of the Democratic Party, and a spokesman for left-liberalism and the elderly. He represented Florida in the United States Senate from 1936 to 1951, and the Mia ...
from
Miami, Florida
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...
and four Representatives from
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
J. J. Pickle
James Jarrell "Jake" Pickle (October 11, 1913 – June 18, 2005) was a United States Representative from the 10th congressional district of Texas from 1963 to 1995.
Pickle was born in Roscoe, Texas and brought up in Big Spring. He acquired h ...
Estes Kefauver
Carey Estes Kefauver (;
July 26, 1903 – August 10, 1963) was an American politician from Tennessee. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1939 to 1949 and in the Senate from 1949 until his d ...
died in office.
Governor
A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...
Frank G. Clement
Frank Goad Clement (June 2, 1920 – November 4, 1969) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 41st Governor of Tennessee from 1953 to 1959 and from 1963 to 1967. Inaugurated for the first time at age 32, he was the state's younge ...
made no secret that he wanted to run in the special election due in 1964 for the final two years of Kefauver's term. To that end, he appointed one of his cabinet members,
Herbert S. Walters
Herbert Sanford Walters (November 17, 1891August 17, 1973) was a Democratic United States Senator from Tennessee from 1963 to 1964.
Early life and education
Walters was a native of Jefferson County, Tennessee. He was a graduate of the former Ca ...
, to serve as a caretaker until the special election. However, Clement's plan backfired when Bass defeated him in the Democratic primary held in August.
In November, Bass defeated the
Republican
Republican can refer to:
Political ideology
* An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law.
** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
nominee,
Howard Baker
Howard Henry Baker Jr. (November 15, 1925 June 26, 2014) was an American politician and diplomat who served as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 1967 to 1985. During his tenure, he rose to the rank of Senate Minority Leader and then ...
by only 4.7 percentage points—the closest that a Republican had come to winning election to the Senate from Tennessee at the time. Since the election was for an unexpired term, and in the Senate seniority is a very important consideration when being considered for committee assignments, office assignments, and the like, Bass was sworn in as soon as the election results could be certified in order to give him a slight seniority advantage over other freshmen Senators elected in 1964. Bass became Tennessee's junior Senator (the senior Senator at that time being Albert Gore, Sr.) and prepared to run for a full term in 1966. Bass voted in favor of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement ...
.
However, this race proved problematic for Bass. Clement still desired the seat for himself, especially since he could not run for reelection as governor in 1966 (in those days, Tennessee governors were barred from immediately succeeding themselves). He wanted to avoid being forced out of politics, as he had once before when faced with term limits the first time in 1958. Due to a large Republican crossover vote, Bass lost the August 1966 Democratic primary to Clement, even though he received 10% more votes than in the previous election. Clement went on to lose resoundingly to Baker in the general election.
Later political career
Bass subsequently made two attempts to re-enter politics. He ran for the 1974 Democratic nomination for governor, but finished fifth in a nine-candidate field—well behind the eventual winner,
Ray Blanton
Leonard Ray Blanton (April 10, 1930 – November 22, 1996)Fred Rolater"Leonard Ray Blanton" ''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture'', 2009. Retrieved: December 31, 2012.redrawn since his previous service. Bass found himself running in a large amount of territory that he did not know and that did not know him. Much of this area was located in suburban territory near Memphis and Nashville that had turned heavily Republican, at least at the national level. Bass lost badly — by almost 29 points — to the incumbent Republican representative,
Robin Beard
Robin Jerald Beard Jr. (August 21, 1939 – June 16, 2007) was an American politician who served as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from Tennessee's 6th congressional district, who served from 1973 to 1983. ...
His first marriage to Avanell K Bass ended in divorce in 1967. He married Judy Bobo, of Nashville, in 1975; they divorced in 1979. In 1992 he married Jacqui Colter, who outlived him. After his divorce in 1979, he moved to
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
, where he lived in
Miami Shores
Miami Shores is a village in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States.
History
By the early 1900s, the area encompassing today's Miami Shores Village was occupied by a starch (coontie) mill, a tomato packing plant, a saw mill, a pineapple planta ...
until his death from
lung cancer
Lung cancer, also known as lung carcinoma (since about 98–99% of all lung cancers are carcinomas), is a malignant lung tumor characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissue (biology), tissues of the lung. Lung carcinomas derive from tran ...
in 1993, aged 74.
His first cousin is actor Dewey Martin.