James Henry Quillen (January 11, 1916[1] – November 2, 2003) was an American politician who served as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from Tennessee from 1963 to 1997.

Quillen worked as a restaurant kitchen prep worker, a grocery store clerk, a copy boy, and later as a young adult, an advertising salesman for a Kingsport newspaper.

[2] Prior to the U.S. entry into World War II, Quillen received a two-year Selective Service System Class 3-A draft deferment beginning in December 1940 through late November 1942.

[citation needed] The USS Antietam entered the Pacific theater of operations too late in the war to participate in combat, as the carrier arrived in Hawaii from the Panama Canal just as the first atomic bomb was dropped by the United States on Japan.

[citation needed] Eventually becoming a Kingsport and Johnson City based real estate development and insurance company owner (starting Kingsport Development Company, Inc.), and bank executive following World War II, Quillen also was elected as a Republican member of the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1954, serving four terms from a district in Sullivan County.

241, enacted July 2, 1964) is a landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States[7] that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

The final version of Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law later on that same day by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964, at the White House.

[9][10] In April 1971, U.S. Representative Olin Teague of Texas introduced a bill to create five medical schools in conjunction with established VA hospitals and U.S.

However, the October 4, 1993, edition of the Kingsport Times-News released an investigative report entitled "Story of ETSU medical school's founding not always in agreement with facts" documented several facts pertaining to the Teague-Cranston Act that disputed Quillen's district claim of his amendment sponsorship:[11] The Teague-Cranston Act passed without a dissenting vote in October 1972, and was signed by U.S. President Richard Nixon.

However, without significant support in East Tennessee, Dunn stood almost no chance against the popular Democratic State House Speaker, Ned McWherter.

The name of one of the school's early benefactors and teachers, Paul Dishner, was later removed in the wake of a "homosexual sex scandal",[12] and is now officially known as the East Tennessee State University James H. Quillen College of Medicine.

In 1993, a study first featured within the Orlando Sentinel used a baseball hitting percentages statistical analogy to rate the effectiveness of members of the U.S. Congress, listed Quillen with a .000 average.

After retiring, Quillen was inducted as an honorary member of the East Tennessee State University chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity.

East Tennessee State University received an estimated $14.6 million for two scholarship endowments, including one for students of James H. Quillen College of Medicine.