BUCHANAN, Junious ("Buck")

(b. 10 September 1940 in Gainesville, Alabama; d. 16 July 1992 in Kansas City, Missouri), professional football player for thirteen seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs and one of the greatest defensive linemen in both the American Football League (AFL) and the National Football League (NFL).

Buchanan, one of four children born to Wallace and Fannie Buchanan, grew up in Gainesville, near Birmingham, Alabama. After winning All-State honors in both basketball and football at A. H. Parker High School in Birmingham, Buchanan became a two-way (offensive and defensive) star and small-college All-American at Grambling State University in Grambling, Louisiana, under coach Eddie Robinson. From 1959 to 1962, Buchanan played a key role in bringing Grambling and Coach Robinson to national attention as producers of professional football players.

In 1963, following his senior year at Grambling (he completed his degree later, in 1969), Buchanan was the first player drafted by the AFL and the first player ever drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs, a new team that had recently moved from Dallas, where they played for three seasons as the Texans. Buchanan played with the Chiefs in their Super Bowl I loss to the Green Bay Packers in 1967 and in their Super Bowl IV victory over the Minnesota Vikings in 1970. Although first separate leagues, in 1970 the AFL and NFL merged into a single league, and the Chiefs' victory over the Vikings, following the New York Jets' upset of the Baltimore Colts the previous year, fully established the teams of the old AFL as equal partners with the traditional clubs of the NFL.

Each year from 1965 through 1972, Buchanan was named to either the AFL All-Star game or the NFL Pro Bowl. He was named the Chiefs' Most Valuable Player in 1965 and 1967 and was a major reason for the team's dominating defense during its Super Bowl years. Durable as well as talented, he missed only one game in his thirteen seasons with the Chiefs. At six feet, seven inches and 280 pounds, Buchanan was exceptionally quick for his size, a prototype of the modern defensive tackle. Longtime opponent Gene Upshaw, a guard for the Oakland Raiders, described playing against the huge but elusive Buchanan as being "like hitting a ghost." Although Upshaw was considered too tall for a guard by some scouts, the Raiders drafted him specifically to play against Buchanan. Together the two men raised the standard for future NFL linemen. Raiders coach John Madden once said that Buchanan "revolutionized the game."

After retiring from play in 1975, Buchanan worked for two seasons as an assistant coach for the New Orleans Saints under his former Chiefs coach Hank Stram. He then spent one season with the Cleveland Browns before leaving football permanently and returning to the Kansas City area. He started two businesses, All-Pro Construction Company and All-Pro Advertising, and became deeply involved in local business and civic activities. He was a founder of the Black Chamber of Commerce of Greater Kansas City, serving as its president from 1986 to 1989. He was appointed to the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority in 1987, to the Kansas City Board of Election Commissioners in 1989, and to the board of the Kansas City Downtown Minority Development Corporation in 1991.

For his contributions to the community, Buchanan was the recipient of the first Golden Torch Award in 1990, presented by the University of Missouri–Kansas City to a distinguished citizen who exemplifies how participation in college athletics relates to success in other areas. He received the Kansas City Spirit Award in 1992 and was named among the 100 most influential African Americans in Kansas City by the Kansas City Globe. Buchanan died at age fifty-one at his home following a two-year struggle with lung cancer, leaving his wife Georgia and three children from an earlier marriage to Elizabeth Peet, whom he met at Grambling. He is buried in Mount Moriah Cemetery in Kansas City.

As the first player from an all-black college ever drafted in the first round and the first player selected in the entire AFL draft in 1963, Buchanan was a key figure in what might be considered the golden era of black college football. After twelve years of excluding African Americans, the NFL began to sign black players in 1946. That year also saw the appearance of an integrated rival league, the All-America Football Conference. Initially, professional scouts were wary of signing players from black colleges, whose programs were underfunded and isolated from the major universities in the segregated South. A small handful of black-college players nonetheless contributed to the integration of pro football in the 1950s. In the 1960s, following the success of such players as Paul ("Tank") Younger, Roosevelt Brown, Rosey Grier, Willie Galimore, and Willie Davis, black colleges were recognized by pro scouts as a major source of football talent.

By 1965 eighty of the approximately 220 black players in the NFL and AFL were from black colleges, fifteen of them from Grambling alone. By 1970 more than eighty players from Grambling—a number second only to the University of Notre Dame—had gone on to play professional football. Besides Buchanan, defensive starters on the Chiefs' 1970 Super Bowl championship team that came from black colleges included Willie Lanier (Morgan State University), Emmitt Thomas (Bishop State Community College), Jim Marsalis (Tennessee State University), Robert Holmes (Southern University and A&M College, Baton Rouge), and Jim Kearney (Prairie View A&M University). Offensive players included Otis Taylor (Prairie View) and Robert Holmes (Southern). This golden age ended in the 1970s when the remaining universities in the Southeastern Conference and Southwest Conference finally integrated their football teams. As not only one of its greatest linemen but also a major figure in a pioneering generation, Buchanan was an important contributor to the modern NFL during its ascension as the country's number-one sports attraction.

Buchanan was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990 and was named to the halls of fame of the Chiefs, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, the states of Alabama and Louisiana, and Grambling State University.

There is no biography or autobiography, either popular or scholarly, of Buchanan, and as a lineman in the 1960s, he was not even the subject of major magazine profiles. His coach at Grambling, Eddie Robinson, comments on Buchanan's importance to his program in his autobiography, written with Richard Lapchick, Never Before, Never Again: The Stirring Autobiography of Eddie Robinson, the Winningest Coach in the History of College Football (1999). Two articles in Ebony magazine, "Pro Football Stars from Negro Colleges" (Oct. 1965), and A. S. ("Doc") Young, "Pro Football Discovers the Black College" (Sept. 1970), provide a context for Buchanan's role in the greater integration of professional football. For the basic facts of his life and career, see Buchanan's obituary in the Kansas City Star (17 July 1992).

Michael Oriard