Hugo Black

Hugo Black, born on February twenty-seventh, eighteen eighty-six, was a prominent American lawyer, politician, and jurist. He served as a U.S. Senator from Alabama from nineteen twenty-seven to nineteen thirty-seven and later as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from nineteen thirty-seven until nineteen seventy-one. A member of the Democratic Party and a staunch supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Black played a significant role in shaping American law during his tenure.

Early in his career, Black's controversial affiliations included anti-Catholic sentiments and membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Reports indicate that he temporarily resigned from the Klan in nineteen twenty-five to enhance his senatorial campaign, only to rejoin the organization the following year. Upon his Supreme Court appointment, Black claimed to have severed ties with the Klan, stating, 'Before becoming a Senator I dropped the Klan. I have had nothing to do with it since that time.'

During his decade in the Senate, Black earned a reputation as a reformer, serving as the secretary of the Senate Democratic Conference and chairing the Senate Education Committee. His nomination to the Supreme Court by President Roosevelt was confirmed with a vote of sixty-three to sixteen, making him the first of nine Roosevelt appointees to the court. Black became known for his textualist arguments and his belief that the liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights were applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.

As one of the most influential justices of the twentieth century, Black's opinions expanded individual rights in landmark cases such as Gideon v. Wainwright and Engel v. Vitale. However, his views were not consistently liberal; he authored the majority opinion in Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. In the mid-1960s, Black's stance shifted slightly more conservative, opposing substantive due process and voting against the recognition of a right to privacy in Griswold v. Connecticut.