During the beginning of his career in the House of Representatives, Buchanan was a conservative Republican, opposing the creation of
Medicare, the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the
Civil Rights Act of 1968, but also worked with Democratic Congressman and fellow Southerner
Charles Weltner to spearhead an investigation of the
Ku Klux Klan. Along with Weltner, the FBI credited Buchanan for bringing KKK membership to its lowest level since
World War II. However, Buchanan's social views would begin to change due to attending church services in Riverside Baptist Church, an integrated church in southwest
Washington D.C. In an interview with the Washington Post in 1976, Buchanan explained his change on social views: "When you're deeply involved in a biracial entity, you think of people as brothers and sisters." Buchanan would also hire African-Americans for his staff and was the first member of the Alabama congressional delegation to nominate African-American candidates to the military service academies. 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". Originally opposed to busing during the Nixon administration, Buchanan would eventually come to support it in order to combat segregation in the Carter administration, as well as a woman's right to choose what to do with their bodies. Buchanan, alongside fellow centrist Republicans
Alphonzo E. Bell Jr. and
John B. Anderson, also supported the creation of a
Martin Luther King, Jr. statue in the Capitol. 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 due to his liberal record and support of civil rights, Buchanan became very popular in his district, even though Democrats continued to hold most local offices in the district well into the 1980s. He was reelected seven times, rarely facing serious 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 defeated in a rematch in 1980.
Auburn University historian
Wayne Flynt described Buchanan as a "centrist in an age where centrism was beginning to be challenged and would finally result in the polarization of American politics into left and right." Despite being to his right,
Barry Goldwater would support Buchanan in his reelection campaigns during the 1970s, and referred to Buchanan as a "fine progressive Republican." His daughter Lynn noted that in his later years, Buchanan did not relate to modern-day Republican values, and had switched to the
Democratic Party. ==Affiliations==