State representative Just weeks after taking his oath of office as a state representative, Jack, along with the former mayor of
Minden,
J. Frank Colbert, ran unsuccessfully for
Louisiana's 4th congressional district seat in the
United States House of Representatives. He was eliminated from the
runoff election, with victory claimed by the three-term incumbent
Overton Brooks, also of Shreveport. Like virtually all of the Shreveport-area politicians during the 1950s, Jack was known for his fervent support of
racial segregation. In 1956, he opposed a bill which would have exempted the
Sugar Bowl in
New Orleans from the state ban on "interracial activities". He supported a bill to require the labeling of blood by race of the donor. The raising of the
Confederate flag at the Caddo Parish Courthouse embodied the sentiments of white segregationists of Jack's era. In 1962, Jack joined his House colleague, Representative
Parey Branton of
Shongaloo in
Webster Parish, in calling for a change in the method by which Louisiana allocates its
electoral votes. The two urged adoption of the framework used by
Maine and
Nebraska under which one elector is allotted for each congressional district to the winner by
plurality in that district, and two at-large electoral votes are assigned to the top vote-getter statewide, plurality or majority. The plan was not adopted. It could have enabled Louisiana to choose split electors, as
Alabama did in 1960 and
New Jersey in 1860. Jack's House tenure extended from the administrations of Governors
Sam Houston Jones to the second term of
Jimmie Davis. During his long career in the House, Jack served alongside numerous colleagues who reached the highest point in state politics, including
Taddy Aycock,
Bill Dodd,
C. H. "Sammy" Downs,
John McKeithen,
Louis J. Michot,
deLesseps Story Morrison, Sr.,
Dave L. Pearce, and
William M. Rainach, along with his Caddo colleagues
Algie D. Brown,
Frank Fulco, and
James C. Gardner.
Later Public Office In 1966, two years after his legislative service lapsed, Jack ran unsuccessfully for the
Louisiana Public Service Commission, a utility regulatory agency, in an attempt to win the seat held by the appointed
John S. Hunt, II, of Monroe, a nephew of Governors
Huey Pierce Long, Sr., and
Earl Kemp Long. In that campaign Jack declared himself as one opposed to all kinds of "federal encroachment." He was joined in the race against Hunt by two of his former legislative colleagues, Parey Branton and
John Sidney Garrett of
Haynesville. Though Branton finished in sixth place in the contest, he led by a
plurality in his own Webster Parish. Hunt and Garrett, the two leading candidates, met in a
runoff election on September 24. Hunt had enjoyed a considerable
plurality in the first primary round of balloting and then defeated Garrett to hold on to the position. John McKeithen was the previous public service commissioner from the district, and as governor had named Hunt as his own successor. From 1976 to 1984, Jack was an elected member of the final two terms of the former
Caddo Parish Police Jury, the parish governing body. He lost his position on the police jury, when it was reorganized in 1984 as the
Caddo Parish Commission. Jack died of
congestive heart failure and is interred at Forest Park East Cemetery in Shreveport. ==References==