Political, Lawyers & Judges, Hugo Black, Hugo L. Black 

"Three decades after his death, the life and career of Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black continue to be studied and discussed. This latest and perhaps definitive study of Blacks origins and early influences has been 25 years in the making and offers fresh insights into the justices character, thought processes, and instincts. Black came out of hardscrabble Alabama hill country, and he never forgot his origins. He was further shaped in the early 20th-century politics of Birmingham, where he set up a law practice and began his political career, eventually rising to the U.S. Senate, from which he was selected by FDR for the high court. Blacks nomination was opposed partly on the grounds that he had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. One of the books conclusions that is sure to be controversial is that in the context of Birmingham in the early 1920s, Blacks joining of the KKK was a progressive act. This startling assertion is supported by an examination of the conflict that was then raging in Birmingham between the Big Mule industrialists and the blue-collar labor unions. Black, of course, went on to become a staunch judicial advocate of free speech and civil rights, thus making him one of the figures most vilified by the KKK and other white supremacists in the 1950s and 1960s." - Voila 

Content:
" ... I am a Southerner ..." -- "Til death does us part" -- "Hugo-to-hell" -- "A dern sight more snakes than you can kill" -- Bessemer blues -- Haughty warriors -- Home at war -- "Ego" and the Miniards -- " ... For better, for worse ..." -- "The bottom of the evil" -- The golden rule of good citizenship -- "The humblest son of the humblest citizen" -- " ... Not near free ..." -- Benediction: "Friends ... my friends." 

Includes bibliographical references (pages 597-613) and index.