Biography

He graduated from Louisville Male High School

Louisville Male High School

Louisville Male Traditional High School is a public secondary school serving students in grades 9 through 12 in the southside of Louisville, Kentucky, USA. It is part of the Jefferson County Public School District....

 then earned a M.D. degree from the University of Louisville

University of Louisville

The University of Louisville is a public university in Louisville, Kentucky. When founded in 1798, it was the first city-owned public university in the United States and one of the first universities chartered west of the Allegheny Mountains. The university is mandated by the Kentucky General...

 in 1892. He began practicing medicine in Louisville the following year.

He was president of the Board of Aldermen from 1909 to 1913 as a Democrat, and elected mayor in 1913 with support of John Henry Whallen

John Henry Whallen

John Henry Whallen was a Democratic Party political boss in Louisville, Kentucky during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in New Orleans, he moved with his family to Cincinnati, Ohio in his youth. As a boy during the Civil War he served the Confederate Army in Schoolfield's Battery as a...

's Democratic machine

Political machine

A political machine is a political organization in which an authoritative boss or small group commands the support of a corps of supporters and businesses , who receive rewards for their efforts...

. Buschemeyer's administration quickly became bogged down in the racial issues of the time, signing a 1914 ordinances to bar blacks from living in white neighborhoods, and vice versa. The law was challenged by the Louisville chapter of the NAACP

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...

. The case, Buchanan v. Warley

Buchanan v. Warley

Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 was a unanimous United States Supreme Court decision addressing civil government instituted racial segregation in residential areas. The Court held that a Louisville, Kentucky, city ordinance prohibiting the sale of real property to African Americans violated the...

, went to the Supreme Court

Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

, which ruled the ordinance unconstitutional.

He was voted out of office in 1917, and was the last of the machine-era Democrat mayors of Louisville. He died in 1935 and was buried in St. Louis Cemetery in Louisville.