John Hall Buchanan, Jr. - Congressional Tenure

Congressional Tenure

Among the significant legislation passed during his tenure was the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution which clarifies and refines the office of the Vice President of the United States, the Medicare Act, which Buchanan opposed, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Buchanan was a moderate-to-liberal Republican, especially by Southern Republican standards even then. Although he had been elected because of local anger at the Civil Rights Act, his tenure was marked by strong advocacy for civil rights and women's rights. In his first term, he worked with Democratic Congressman Charles Weltner to spearhead an investigation of the Ku Klux Klan. The FBI credited Buchanan and Weltner's efforts for bringing KKK membership to its lowest level since World War II. He was the first Alabama congressman to hire staff and nominate to the military academies on a bi-racial basis.

As a senior member of the House Committee on Education and Labor, Buchanan helped lead the fight in 1972 in the House for enactment of the Education Act, Title IX, which requires equality for women in the programs of American colleges and universities, including athletics. He served as ranking Republican on the Equal Rights Subcommittee and the subcommittee with jurisdiction over the arts. For fourteen years, he was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, where he championed the rights of people behind the Iron Curtain, especially Jewish and Christian dissidents, as well as the black majorities in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. As ranking minority member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Operations, he was one of the principal authors of the Foreign Service Act of 1980. In that year he received the Honor Award, Women’s Action Organization (State Department, ICA, AID) and the Honor Award "for commitment to the advancement of women in the Foreign Service community."

He served as a member of the U. S. delegation to the 28th United Nations General Assembly, and to the Sixth Special Assembly, having ambassadorial rank with each appointment. He was a member of the U. S. delegation to the U. N. Human Rights Commission (1978–1980), was ranking Republican to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, and was a member of the U.S. Delegation to the Belgrade Conference on the Helsinki Accords.

Largely because of his liberal record and support of civil rights, Buchanan rarely faced credible opposition. In 1978, however, he was challenged in the primary by a considerably more conservative Republican, Albert L. Smith, Jr., a longtime party activist in the Birmingham area. Buchanan fended him off but was soundly defeated in a rematch in 1980.