49 Facts About Birch Bayh

Birch Bayh was first elected to office in 1954, when he won election to the Indiana House of Representatives; in 1958, he was elected Speaker, the youngest person to hold that office in the state's history.

Birch Bayh authored Title IX of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which bans gender discrimination in higher education institutions that receive federal funding.

Birch Bayh voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the US Supreme Court.

Birch Bayh led the Senate opposition to the nominations of Clement Haynsworth and G Harrold Carswell, two of Richard Nixon's unsuccessful Supreme Court nominees.

Birch Bayh intended to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972, but declined to run after his wife was diagnosed with cancer.

Birch Bayh sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, but dropped out of the campaign after disappointing finishes in the first set of primaries and caucuses.

Birch Bayh won re-election in 1968 and 1974, but lost his 1980 bid for a fourth term to Dan Quayle.

Birch Bayh spent summers on his grandparents' farm in Shirkieville, Indiana, where he later lived.

From 1946 to 1948, Birch Bayh served as an MP with the United States Army in occupied Germany following World War II.

Birch Bayh excelled in sports, competing as a Golden Gloves boxer in college and taking part in two Major League Baseball tryouts.

Birch Bayh graduated from the Purdue University School of Agriculture in 1951, where he was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega social fraternity and senior class president.

Birch Bayh married Marvella Hern in August 1952, and took courses at Indiana State University in Terre Haute for two years while running the family farm.

At the time, Birch Bayh was the youngest Speaker in Indiana state history.

At age 34, Bayh was elected to the United States Senate in the 1962 midterm elections, defeating 18-year incumbent Homer E Capehart.

Birch Bayh's success was attributed to a vigorous campaign of 300 speeches between Labor Day and the election, and a catchy campaign jingle that taught voters the correct pronunciation of his last name:.

Birch Bayh was serving on the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments in August 1963 when its chairman, Estes Kefauver, died of a heart attack.

Judiciary Committee Chairman James Eastland planned to terminate the subcommittee to save money, but Birch Bayh offered to serve as chairman and pay for its staff out of his Senate office budget.

Birch Bayh introduced an amendment on December 12,1963, which was studied and then re-introduced and passed in 1965 with Emanuel Celler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

In 1968, Birch Bayh wrote One Heartbeat Away, a book about the passage of the Twenty-fifth Amendment.

Birch Bayh continued his effort in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he met opposition.

The group was flying from Washington National Airport to the Massachusetts Democratic party's convention, where Birch Bayh was to be the keynote speaker.

Birch Bayh suffered muscular trauma and his wife fractured two vertebrae, but they were able to walk out of the wreckage.

Birch Bayh went back again to check on Moss and Zimny, but they were non-responsive.

In 1980, Birch Bayh endorsed President Jimmy Carter for reelection, a decision that rankled the staff of Ted Kennedy, who was challenging Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In 1970, Birch Bayh witnessed one of these efforts to pass the ERA languish and fail due to poor-wording and "poison pill" conservative amendments.

Birch Bayh based his appeal on extending the rights already guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment to a person's gender.

Birch Bayh successfully fought to extend the seven-year ratification period to June 30,1982, but the Equal Rights Amendment ultimately failed.

Birch Bayh was influential in the addition of Title IX to the Higher Education Act, to give women equal opportunities in public education.

Birch Bayh was Title IX's author, the first person to introduce it in Congress, and its chief Senate sponsor.

Labor and civil rights leaders, concerned with Haynsworth's conservative record on workers' and civil rights, soon discovered that Haynsworth had recently ruled in a favor of a company in which he owned stock, and after questioning him on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Birch Bayh felt Haynsworth did not recognize his own conflict of interest.

Birch Bayh suggested that they research every case that Carswell had decided in his judicial career.

The proposed Constitutional change with which Birch Bayh was most closely associated in his final years in the Senate was his attempt to eliminate the Electoral College and replace it with a popular vote in the 1960s and 1970s.

One of Birch Bayh's proposals passed the House easily but was filibustered in the Senate.

Birch Bayh wrote a foreword to the book Every Vote Equal by John Koza, a co-founder of National Popular Vote.

Birch Bayh intended to run for the 1972 Democratic nomination for president, but his wife was diagnosed with cancer and he put his plans on hold.

On October 21,1975, Birch Bayh announced his candidacy for the 1976 Democratic nomination in a tour of his native state.

Birch Bayh ultimately finished a distant third behind Uncommitted delegates and Carter, seemingly hindered by his support for women's rights.

Liberal support did not coalesce and Birch Bayh finished third in the New Hampshire primary and then seventh in the Massachusetts primary.

Birch Bayh suspended his campaign on March 4,1976, after 136 days as a formal candidate.

Birch Bayh invited Senator Bob Dole, a Kansas Republican, to craft a uniform policy.

Birch Bayh ran for reelection to the US Senate three times.

In 1974, Birch Bayh narrowly defeated Indianapolis Mayor Richard Lugar, garnering only 50.7 percent of the vote in what was otherwise a disastrous year for Republicans.

In 1980, Birch Bayh faced Congressman and future Vice President Dan Quayle.

In 1981, Bayh joined Robert Drinan, Don Edwards, Edith Green, Patsy Mink and Pat Schroeder to file an amicus brief before the Supreme Court in the case of North Haven Board of Education v Bell.

Birch Bayh continued to advocate for the direct election of the president, speaking with lawmakers around the country about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, in which states agree to pledge their presidential electors to the winner of the national popular vote once a majority of presidential electors join the compact.

Birch Bayh served on the advisory board of the non-profit, National Popular Vote, Inc.

In 2003, Indianapolis's historic US Courthouse and Post Office was renamed in Bayh's honor as the Birch Bayh Federal Building and United States Courthouse.

Marvella Birch Bayh died of breast cancer on April 24,1979.

Birch Bayh died of pneumonia on March 14,2019, in Easton, Maryland, at the age of 91.