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Mr. Brock was an executive with his family’s candy company in Chattanooga, Tenn., before he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1962. He was the first Republican to represent his district in Congress in more than 40 years.
During his eight years in the House, he had a conservative voting record that he later renounced, in part. Among other positions, he opposed the creation of Medicare, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“I was wrong on that vote,” he later said of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, “which I cast because I thought the federal government bureaucracy was not the best mechanism to ensure equality.”
He said he had been guided by his experiences in Chattanooga, where his prominent family helped lead early efforts to expand educational opportunities and integrate lunch counters and other public accommodations. He recalled that a cross had been burned in his father’s front yard by the Ku Klux Klan.
Nevertheless, Mr. Brock continued to adopt conservative views during his years in Congress. In a speech on April 4, 1968, he condemned a proposed civil rights march in Washington, planned by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., as “a primitive, intimidating kind of pressure lobbying” by “ruthless political agitators.”
That night, King was assassinated in Memphis.
“It was an awful speech, and I was wrong,” Mr. Brock told The Washington Post in 1994. “The loss of Dr. King woke a lot of us up.”
In 1970, Mr. Brock defeated country music star Tex Ritter in Tennessee’s Republican Senate primary, then faced incumbent Democrat Albert Gore Sr. Mr. Brock’s campaign highlighted Gore’s support for civil rights and his opposition to the Vietnam War. Mr. Brock received 51 percent of the vote to deny Gore — whose son later served in the Senate and as vice president — a fourth term in office.
In the Senate, Mr. Brock worked on budgetary matters and sponsored legislation that helped expand women’s access to credit in banks and other lending institutions. He joined other conservatives, including Republicans and Southern Democrats, in voting against an effort to curb the use of the Senate filibuster in 1971.
When Mr. Brock ran for reelection in 1976 against Democrat Jim Sasser, he had to fend off allegations of accepting illegal contributions, although he was never charged. He was also ridiculed for paying only about $2,000 in income taxes, prompting opponents to wear campaign…
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