Black, Hugo L. (1886–1971)

BORN IN ALABAMA, Hugo Lafayette Black came from humble origins. He received his law degree from the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. He started working as a personal injury lawyer, and also served briefly as a prosecutor and as a police court judge. Although successful, Black refused to work for large corporations and institutions. He preferred to represent the workingman and had many clients of all races. During World War I, he volunteered and served as an artillery officer.

Hugo L. Black established himself as a populist, taking sides for the workingman and against big business.

[Page 82]During the 1920s Black joined the Ku Klux Klan. Later, trying to minimize his involvement, he said that he objected to the Klan's use of violence, but joined it to meet people and attract clients. The Klan in 1920s Alabama was not the fringe organization it is today. Most community leaders were members. Membership opened doors to an aspiring lawyer. However, it was violently racist and anti-immigrant, and intolerant of Catholics and Jews. While there is some evidence that he objected internally to the Klan's use of violence and illegal activity, Black was an active speaker and took a leadership role within the local organization. The Klan was instrumental in Black's election to the U.S. Senate in 1926. Thousands of Klansmen turned out to vote for him and work as election volunteers.

In the Senate, Black established himself as a populist, taking sides for the workingman and against big business. He remained part of the southern block of conservative senators who opposed an antilynching law and immigration reform. When Franklin Roosevelt became president, Black was an ardent supporter of New Deal policies.

Roosevelt appointed Black to the Supreme Court in 1937. As a member of the Senate, Black was quickly confirmed with little investigation. When newspapers then published evidence of his Klan membership, there were protests and calls for resignation or impeachment. Justice Black, however, was determined to remain. Black joined a conservative Supreme Court—his views on legislative deference and a more powerful federal government left him in the minority. For example, Black held the then-radical view that the Bill of Rights should bind state governments as well as the federal government.

His majority opinion, overturning the convictions of four black men who had been coerced into murder confessions, Chambers v. Florida (1940), helped to assuage concerns about his prior Klan relationship. Throughout his tenure, he supported efforts to strike down other impediments to minority civil rights. He joined a majority in striking down racially restrictive covenants in property deeds with Shelley v. Kraemer (1948). He also joined the unanimous decision that outlawed segregation in schools in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). However, he also wrote the decision approving of the government wartime detention of Japanese Americans in Korematsu v. U.S. (1944).

Black supported the Court's expansion of the rights of criminal defendants. He supported the exclusion of illegally seized evidence in Mapp v. Ohio (1961). He wrote the majority opinion guaranteeing govern-ment-paid attorneys to indigent defendants in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963). He supported prohibiting the use of confessions unless suspects in custody were first advised of their rights in Miranda v. Arizona (1966).

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