Associate Justice Hugo La Fayette Black, 76, last week completed his 25th term on the U.S. Supreme Court in the same way that he began his court career—in the center of a storm. To his admirers, Black is a judicial hero, forever fighting on behalf of individual liberties. To his critics, he is an archvillain seeking to subvert national institutions. As time passes, it is apparent that the extremists on both sides have forgotten many of the facts about what and who Hugo Black really is.
The son of a small farmer, later a storekeeper, in rural Harlan, Ala., Black had little pre-law college training, but obtained a law degree from the University of Alabama with honors. He set up private practice in Ashland, became a police judge and later a prosecuting attorney. In 1925 he decided to forsake a $50,000-a-year law practice, mostly in damage suits, to run for the Senate. Though virtually unknown, he beat four other candidates in a statewide campaign conducted from a model T.
Elected for a second term in the 1932 Roosevelt landslide, Black became one of the most fervent New Dealers in Congress. He backed revisionary New Deal legislation on labor, utilities, industry and finance. He supported Roosevelt’s ill-fated plan to pack the Supreme Court. He was a relentless Senate investigator, successfully raking up corrupt practices in Government mail-carrying subsidies and in lobbying for utility holding companies (he favored public power); sometimes his inquisitorial tactics were criticized as being in violation of the Bill of Rights.
Removing the Doubt. In 1937 Roosevelt named Black to the Supreme Court—partly because Black was the sort of liberal that F.D.R. wanted, partly because protocol would make his rejection by the Senate almost impossible. Opposition to Black’s appointment was great, but it rose to a crescendo after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette dug up proof that he had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan for two years. (The reporter won a Pulitzer Prize for his revelation.) Like some other Southern politicians, Black had joined the Klan to further his career. But, he explained, he had no sympathy for its aims. He went on radio to defend his record on civil liberties—and has never again referred to the Klan episode publicly.
In the years since. Black has left no doubt whatever about his position on civil liberties. In one of his earlier opinions, he wrote a scathing denunciation of Florida practices in extracting confessions from Negroes. Much of the South sees Black as a traitor to his native region for his stand against segregation. In constitutional questions arising from investigations of domestic Communism, the onetime Senate investigator has refused to accept any cold war modifications on civil liberties. Always articulate in his opinions, Black has become the acknowledged leader of the Supreme Court’s liberal bloc. The Bill of Rights is Black’s bible—and he takes it as literally as the Biblical fundamentalists. Thus, he recently argued (off the bench) that libel and slander laws are an infringement on freedom of the press and of speech as guaranteed by the Constitution.
Off the Bench. A voracious reader who takes on an enormous load of court work, Black is a diffident and kindly man in his nonworking hours. Married for the second time (his wife of 31 years died ten years ago), to his former secretary, he lives in a handsome Alexandria, Va., home, still plays an energetic game of tennis. Earthy and easygoing, he frequently takes his meals in the court’s cafeteria, where he chats and jokes with the waitresses. When among the other justices, he constantly but cordially tries to win them over to his views. And when he propounds or defends those views, he becomes a tiger. Last week, as Chief Justice Warren and Solicitor General Archibald Cox marked Black’s 25th year with praise for his “unflagging devotion to the Constitution of the U.S.,” Black sank back in his chair, expressionless and embarrassed. But later in the morning, when it came time to read his opinion on school prayers, he came alive with force and eloquence, happy once more to be in the midst of controversy.
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