1-58838-144-7
$37.50 hardcover
6 x 9
500 pages
NewSouth Books
For more information on Hugo Black and the book, visit Steve Suitts's
website www.hugoblack.com |
This book is a riveting account of the forces that shaped Hugo Black
into the man I think was the most remarkable Supreme Court justice of the
20th century. He was, as his wife Josephine said, an ‘irresistible force’—and
here are the origins and development of his character. His role as a
libertarian judge made him anathema in Alabama for decades, but he was
always a son of Alabama.
—Anthony Lewis, Pulitzer Prize winner for Supreme Court coverage
One thing is sure to be the focus of attention in this book, Hugo
Black's joining the Ku Klux Klan in 1923. Suitts makes a persuasive case
that it was a progressive step and not an act of bigotry. But the book
does far more than that. Hugo Black is a labor of love, the product
of twenty-five years’ research and a forceful style of writing. A vivid
account of a young lawyer's career on the way to the United States Senate,
it also details the perennial struggle between cultural and economic
values, Alabama style, in the first third of the last century.
—George B. Tindall, Kenan Professor of History Emeritus, University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill
A rich and thoroughly researched account of Hugo Black's early years in
an Alabama still reeling from the Civil War. The book illuminates the
political, economic, class, racial and family forces that shaped one of
the nation's most influential and controversial Supreme Court justices.
—Norman Dorsen, Stokes Professor of Law, New York University, and
President ACLU 1976-1991
In rich detail, and with a wealth of eye-witness testimony, Steve
Suitts lets the reader see why Hugo Black was a great man, and how he fell
short of perfection. In particular, Black's membership in the Ku Klux
Klan, and the role of the Klan in Alabama in the 1920s, is analyzed in a
completely fresh and honest way. This vivid portrait of Mr. Justice Black
from his rural roots to his success in the raw industrial city of
Birmingham is full of insight and understanding. It leaves me hoping for
the volumes on the Washington years soon.
—Sheldon Hackney, former Chairman of the National Endowment for the
Humanities
Biographers and historians have long wondered how it could be that Hugo
Black, once a shrewd Alabama politician and even a Klansman, could become
the nation’s preeminent advocate of constitutional
rectitude, justice, and equal rights. Until Steve Suitts came
along that question was hard to answer. Now, in this beautifully
written story of Black’s early life we learn how the complexities
of a man’s life defy the common urge to quick judgments and easy
stereotypes. This rich and superbly executed work should become
a model for unraveling the apparent contradictions in the lives of
great figures in our history.
— Paul M. Gaston, Professor Emeritus of Southern and Civil Rights
History, University of Virginia
Steve Suitts' book alters our perception of Hugo L. Black's
Alabama origins to focus on the less familiar instances of social
activism, including the trial lawyer's defense of poor whites and blacks
against Birminghams' entrenched system of wealth and
power, struggle to preserve United Mine
Workers' interracial unionism, and battle to save indigent
black prisoners from the deadly convict mine system. The emphasis upon
Black's social activism leads to Suitts' provocative conclusion that Black
joined the Ku Klux Klan as a result of the commitment to "ethical
responsibility," resigning, ironically, because of political
expediency. This controversial assessment reveals new dimension's of
the South's and the nation's struggle with racism and social justice.
—Tony Freyer, University Research Professor of History and Law, The
University of Alabama
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 Black’s origins and early influences has
been 25 years in the making and offers fresh insights into the justice’s
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.
Black’s nomination was opposed partly on the grounds that he had been a
member of the Ku Klux Klan. One of the book’s conclusions that is sure
to be controversial is that in the context of Birmingham in the early
1920s, Black’s 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.
about the author
Steve
Suitts is a native of Winston County, Alabama, which seceded from Alabama
when Alabama seceded from the Union. He is the founder of the Civil
Liberties Union of Alabama, and was for 20 years the director of the
Southern Regional Council. He now works for the Southern Education
Foundation in Atlanta, where he lives. |
