Jack Brooks, who died Tuesday, spent 42 years in Congress representing his Southeast Texas district. ZUMAPRESS.com

Texas Democrat Jack Brooks spent 42 years in Congress, where he earned a reputation as a pugnacious and partisan political street fighter.

Mr. Brooks, who died Tuesday at age 89, served as chairman of the House Government Operations Committee and of the Judiciary Committee, where he helped draft the articles of impeachment of President Richard Nixon.

Renowned for his ferocious questioning of witnesses in congressional hearings, Mr. Brooks was "the quintessential antagonist, sitting there glaring with his cigar," the late Democratic Rep. Charles Wilson once told The Dallas Morning News. The late Republican Rep. Henry Hyde called him "a chain saw."

The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, impressed with his imperious manner, often called him "The Baron of Beaumont," a nod to Mr. Brooks' East Texas home town.

First elected to the House in 1952, Mr. Brooks worked closely with fellow Texans House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson (as senator and later president).

During the 1950s, Mr. Brooks was one of the most outspoken Southern supporters of civil rights and later helped draft the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

He was in the motorcade in Dallas when President John Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, and he appears in a famous photograph of Mr. Johnson's swearing-in aboard Air Force One.

His Texas district, which included Beaumont and Galveston, was one of the state's most-heavily unionized. Though widely reputed as an unreconstructed liberal, Mr. Brooks favored the death penalty and was a life member of the National Rifle Association.

Born in Louisiana and raised in Beaumont, Jack Bascom Brooks lost his father when he was an adolescent and did odd jobs to help support his family. He majored in journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and during World War II served with the Marines in the Pacific theater.

He earned a law degree while serving in the Texas legislature. After being elected to the U.S. Congress, Mr. Brooks kept on his desk a paperweight inscribed "Fighting Marine."

"I never thought being a congressman was supposed to be an easy job," he told the Houston Chronicle, shortly after suffering defeat in the Republican tidal-wave election of 1994. "It doesn't bother me a bit to be in a good fight."

—Email remembrances@wsj.com

Write to Stephen Miller at stephen.miller@wsj.com