BLACK, HUGO LAFAYETTE

BLACK, HUGO LAFAYETTE

Hugo LaFayette Black was an associate justice on
the U.S. Supreme Court for nearly thirty-four
years, serving one of the longest and most influential
terms in the history of the Court.
Black was born February 27, 1886, in Harlan,
Alabama, the eighth child of a storekeeper
and farmer. He was raised in rural Alabama and
attended local schools. At the age of seventeen,
Black entered Birmingham Medical College. He
decided that he was more suited to the study of
law, however, and left the college after one year
to attend the University of Alabama Law School,
where he received his bachelor of laws degree in
1906. In the same year, Black was admitted to
the Alabama bar. He practiced briefly in Ashland,
Alabama, near his childhood home. He
then moved to Birmingham, where he quickly
developed a successful practice in TORT, labor,
and contract law. In 1911, he was appointed as
judge on the Birmingham Police Court, but he
resigned eighteen months later to return to private
practice. In 1914, Black was elected county
prosecutor for Jefferson County, Alabama, and
gained local prominence for his investigation of
brutal police tactics used to question suspects at
the county jail. In 1917 Black resigned his position
as prosecutor and enlisted in the Army. He
remained in the United States and served as a
captain of the artillery for a year. Then he
resumed his private practice in Birmingham,
where he frequently represented local workers in
personal injury suits and served as an attorney
for the local chapter of the United Mine Workers.
In 1921 he married Josephine Foster, with
whom he had three children.
In 1923 Black joined the Birmingham chapter
of the KU KLUX KLAN (KKK). He remained a
member for two years.He commented later that,
at the time, he believed joining the group could
further his political and professional career.
In 1926, Black, a Democrat, won a seat in the
U.S. Senate, overcoming four other Democrats
in the race. Black served in the Senate for nearly
ten years and gained prominence as a tenacious
and sometimes relentless investigator into the
activities of Washington, D.C. lobbyists for PUBLIC
UTILITIES.He was also a member of the SENATE
JUDICIARY COMMITTEE and a staunch
supporter of President FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT’s
NEW DEAL legislation. A longtime supporter
of organized labor, Black helped secure
passage of the FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT of
1938 (29 U.S.C.A. § 201 et seq.), which established
a MINIMUM WAGE and a forty-hour workweek
for enterprises in interstate commerce.
In August 1937, Black became Roosevelt’s
first appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court, nominated
to replace retiring justice WILLIS VAN
DEVANTER. Initially, Black’s nomination was met
with some opposition. Some critics cited his relative
lack of judicial experience; others
expressed concern about his “judicial temperament,”
given the aggressive and even abrasive
manner that he was said to display when interrogating
witnesses while a senator. Black was
nevertheless confirmed in October 1937, by a
vote of 63–16. Shortly afterward came confirmation
of rumors that had been circulating
throughout Washington, D.C., about Black’s
KKK ties in the mid-1920s. The controversy died
quickly after Black spoke about the matter in a
radio address. He admitted that he had once
been a member but maintained that he had
resigned many years earlier and had disavowed
any further association with the organization.
Throughout his long career on the Court,
Black wrote a number of landmark decisions
concerning CIVIL RIGHTS, free speech, and other
important constitutional issues. In Chambers v.
Florida, 309 U.S. 227, 60 S. Ct. 472, 84 L. Ed. 716
(1940), he wrote the majority opinion overturning
the death sentences of several blacks who
had been coerced, through many hours of
POLICE INTERROGATION, into confessing to murder.
The Chambers decision, which came early in
Black’s tenure on the Court and was the first
major civil rights decision he wrote, did much to
alleviate the fears of civil libertarians about his
earlier KKK involvement. In another civil rights
case, Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U.S. 454, 81 S. Ct.
182, 5 L. Ed. 2d 206 (1960), Black wrote the
majority opinion holding that racial SEGREGATION
in facilities for travelers violated the INTERSTATE
COMMERCE ACT (49 U.S.C.A. § 501 et seq.).
Black had represented many labor organizations
while a practicing attorney, and he continued
his strong pro-labor stance throughout his
career on the Court. In National Labor Relations
Board v. Waterman Steamship Corp., 309 U.S.
206, 60 S. Ct. 493, 84 L. Ed. 704 (1940), which
involved a dispute over UNFAIR LABOR PRACTICES,
Black wrote for the majority that the
court of appeals could not substitute its judgment
for that of the NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS
BOARD. In his dissent in United Public
Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75, 67 S. Ct. 556, 91
L. Ed. 754 (1947), he opposed restrictions that prohibited federal government workers from
participating in political campaigns. In
YOUNGSTOWN SHEET & TUBE CO. V. SAWYER, 343
U.S. 579, 72 S. Ct. 863, 96 L. Ed. 1153 (1952), the
Court, with Black writing the majority opinion,
held that President HARRY S. TRUMAN did not
have the authority to seize most of the United
States’ steel mills to avert a threatened strike.
Black strongly believed that the DUE
PROCESS CLAUSE of the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
to the Constitution—which provides that
“[n]o State shall make or enforce any law which
shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens
of the United States”—means that the first
eight amendments of the BILL OF RIGHTS must
be applied to the states as well as to the federal
government. Eventually, a majority of the Court
agreed with him. In GIDEON V. WAINWRIGHT,
372 U.S. 335, 83 S. Ct. 792, 9 L. Ed. 2d 799
(1963), Black wrote for the majority that states
must provide defense counsel to indigent defendants
accused of a felony, at any “critical stage”
of the criminal proceedings. In Pointer v. Texas,
380 U.S. 400, 85 S. Ct. 1065, 13 L. Ed. 2d 923
(1965), in another majority opinion, Black
wrote that the SIXTH AMENDMENT right of an
accused to confront witnesses extends to defendants
in state cases.
Black always carried a copy of the Constitution
in his pocket. He was a staunch defender of
the FIRST AMENDMENT and vehemently
opposed any restrictions on the FREEDOM OF
SPEECH. He dissented in DENNIS V. UNITED
STATES, 341 U.S. 494, 71 S. Ct. 857, 95 L. Ed.
1137 (1951), which upheld a federal statute
making it a crime to advocate the overthrow of
the government by force. Black rejected the
Court’s reliance on the “clear-and-presentdanger”
test, in which the Court considered
whether such a serious danger existed that the
restriction of speech was justified. Black wrote,
“There is hope . . . that in calmer times, when
present pressures, passions and fears subside,
this or some other Court will restore the First
Amendment liberties to the high preferred place
where they belong in society.” He joined Justice
William O. Douglas’s dissent in the OBSCENITY
case ROTH V. UNITED STATES, 354 U.S. 476, 77
S. Ct. 1304, 1 L. Ed. 2d 1498 (1957), in which
Douglas maintained that even “prurient” material
was entitled to absolute First Amendment
protection. In the First Amendment case ENGEL
V. VITALE, 370 U.S. 421, 82 S. Ct. 1261, 8 L. Ed.
2d 601 (1962), he wrote the majority opinion
holding that voluntary prayers sponsored by
public schools are unconstitutional. He stated, “It is neither sacrilegious nor antireligious to say
that each separate government in this country
should stay out of the business of . . . sanctioning
. . . prayers and leave that purely religious function
to the people themselves and to those the
people choose to look to for religious guidance.”
One of Black’s last opinions before leaving the
Court was for the Pentagon Papers case, NEW
YORK TIMES CO. V. UNITED STATES, 403 U.S. 713,
91 S. Ct. 2140, 29 L. Ed. 2d 822 (1971), in which
he concurred in the Court’s holding that the
government could not prevent publication of a
classified study on the VIETNAM WAR.
Black departed from his liberal views in
KOREMATSU V. UNITED STATES, 323 U.S. 214, 65
S. Ct. 193, 89 L. Ed. 194 (1944), a widely criticized
decision, for which he wrote the majority
opinion upholding the internment of Japanese
Americans during WORLD WAR II. Despite the
condemnation of Korematsu in the years following
the war, Black stood by the decision, maintaining
that it was justified by the climate of fear
that existed at the time. In addition, his STRICT
CONSTRUCTION of the Constitution led him to
write other opinions that sometimes seem
inconsistent with his liberal views. He dissented
in GRISWOLD V. CONNECTICUT, 381 U.S. 469, 85
S. Ct. 1678, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510 (1965), in which the
Court struck down, on privacy grounds, a state
law that prohibited the sale of contraceptives.
Black maintained that no right of privacy could
be found to emanate “from one or more constitutional
provisions.”
While on the Court, Black was known for
being sometimes antagonistic toward other justices
with whom he disagreed. The Court’s tradition
of keeping private its inner workings and
the nature of the personal relationships between
the justices was broken when Black became
engaged in an unusually public feud with Justice
ROBERT H. JACKSON in 1946. The dispute began
when Jackson, in a letter to the Senate and
House Judiciary Committees, accused Black of a
conflict of interest for participating in two labor
decisions that were argued by a former law partner
of Black’s. Jackson failed to mention that
Black and the attorney had dissolved their partnership
nineteen years earlier and had hardly
seen each other since. Black, in turn, publicly
criticized Jackson’s leave of absence from the
Court from 1945 to 1946 to serve as the U.S.
prosecutor at the NUREMBERG TRIALS, calling
those proceedings a “high grade lynching party.”
Jackson was in line for the chief justice seat,
which had been vacated in 1946, and he blamed
Black when the appointment went to FRED M.
VINSON, selected by President Truman to restore
peace among the members of the Court. Following
Vinson’s appointment, Black and Jackson
were outwardly cordial to each other, though
Jackson was reported to have remained resentful,
believing that Black’s actions had denied
him the post of chief justice.
Healthy and vigorous well into his later life,
Black was an avid tennis player who often shared
the court with his law clerks. On September 17,
1971, Black resigned from the Court at the age of
eighty-five. He died just eight days later after
suffering a massive stroke.
FURTHER READINGS
Frank, John P. 1997. “The Shelf Life of Justice Hugo L.
Black.”Wisconsin Law Review. (January-February).
Hockett, Jeffrey D. 1996. New Deal Justice: The Constitutional
Jurisprudence of Hugo L. Black, Felix Frankfurter, and
Robert H. Jackson. Lanham,Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.
Newman, Roger K. 1999. “The Populist: Hugo Black Overcome
Humble Beginnings—and Membership in the Ku
Klux Klan—To Become a Constitutional Pioneer of
Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.” American Lawyer 21
(December).
—. 1997. Hugo Black: A Biography. New York: Fordham
Univ. Press.

CROSS-REFERENCES
Freedom of the Press; Incorporation Doctrine; Japanese American Evacuation Cases; Right to Counsel; School Prayer.