Hugo Black

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Lore & Background

Black was born in Harlan, Clay County, Alabama, on February 27, 1886, the youngest of eight children. He attended Ashland College, then enrolled at the University of Alabama School of Law, graduating in 1906 with an LL.B. degree. After practicing law in Ashland and later Birmingham, he served as a police court judge in 1911 and as Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney starting in 1914. During World War I, he served in the 81st Field Artillery, attaining the rank of captain as the regimental adjutant. He married Josephine Foster on February 23, 1921, with whom he had three children: Hugo L. Black, II, Sterling Foster, and Martha Josephine. Josephine died in 1951; in 1957, Black married Elizabeth Seay DeMeritte. In the early 1920s, Black became a member of the Robert E. Lee Klan No. 1 in Birmingham. An article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that he temporarily resigned from the Klan in 1925 to bolster his senatorial campaign, before quietly rejoining in 1926. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1926 as a Democrat, he gained a reputation as a tenacious investigator. In 1934, he chaired the committee that looked into air mail carrier contracts, leading to the Air Mail scandal, and introduced the Black–McKellar Bill, later the Air Mail Act of 1934. In 1935, he became chairman of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor. On August 8, 1935, Black went on NBC's National Radio Forum to speak about a $5 million electric industry lobbying campaign against the Wheeler–Rayburn bill. His committee's examination of private telegrams led to an injunction on March 11, 1936, by Chief Justice Alfred A. Wheat of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, on grounds of unreasonable search and seizure. Black was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Roosevelt and confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 63 to 16 (six Democratic Senators and ten Republican Senators voted against him). After confirmation, it was reported he had been given a "grand passport" in 1926 granting him life membership in the Klan. Black responded: "Before becoming a Senator I dropped the Klan. I have had nothing to do with it since that time. I abandoned it. I completely discontinued any association with the organization."

On the Court, Black wrote the majority opinion in Korematsu v. United States (1944), which upheld the internment of Japanese Americans ordered by President Franklin Roosevelt. During the mid-1960s, Black became slightly more conservative. He opposed the doctrine of substantive due process and believed there was no basis in the words of the Constitution for a right to privacy, voting against finding one in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). He also took conservative positions in cases such as Shapiro v. Thompson, Goldberg v. Kelly, Tinker v. Des Moines, and Cohen v. California, where he distinguished between "pure speech" and "expressive conduct."

Reader's Guide

Hugo Black served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1937 to 1971, making him the sixth longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history. He is significant for using historical evidence to support textualist arguments, his position that the liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights were incorporated against the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, and his absolutist stance on the First Amendment, often declaring "No law [abridging the freedom of speech] means no law." Black expanded individual rights in his opinions in cases such as Gideon v. Wainwright, Engel v. Vitale, and Wesberry v. Sanders. However, his legacy is complex: he wrote the majority opinion in Korematsu v. United States (1944), which upheld the internment of Japanese Americans. During the mid-1960s, Black became slightly more conservative, opposing substantive due process and the right to privacy, and taking conservative positions in cases like Tinker v. Des Moines and Cohen v. California. His early membership in the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, which he publicly renounced upon joining the Court, remains a subject of scholarly examination. Black's career reflects both the progressive and illiberal currents of 20th-century American law.

Did You Know?

• Black was the first of nine Roosevelt appointees to the Supreme Court and outlasted all except William O. Douglas.
• He was confirmed to the Supreme Court by a vote of 63 to 16, with six Democratic and ten Republican Senators voting against him.
• Black served as a police court judge in 1911—his only judicial experience prior to the Supreme Court.
• In 1935, Black went on NBC's National Radio Forum to expose a $5 million electric industry lobbying campaign against the Wheeler–Rayburn bill.
• Black wrote the majority opinion in Korematsu v. United States (1944), which upheld the internment of Japanese Americans ordered by President Franklin Roosevelt.