Hugo LaFayette Black

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Hugo LaFayette Black

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Hugo LaFayette Black 1886-1971, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1937-71), b. Harlan, Clay co., Ala. He received his law degree from the Univ. of Alabama in 1906. He practiced law and held local offices before serving (1927-37) in the U.S. Senate. As Senator he ardently supported New Deal measures, conducted Senate investigations of merchant-marine subsidies (1933) and lobbying (1935), and sponsored (1937) the Wages and Hours bill. His appointment to the Supreme Court by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met strong opposition from the public and in the Senate because of his earlier membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Black was, however, a staunch defender of civil liberties, and he became the leader of the activists on the Supreme Court, consistently opposing congressional and state violations of free speech and due process.

Bibliography: See T. E. Yarbrough, Mr. Justice Black and His Critics (1989); study by V. Hamilton (1972).

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Black, Hugo

The Oxford Companion to United States History | 2001 | | © The Oxford Companion to United States History 2001, originally published by Oxford University Press 2001. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Black, Hugo (1886–1971), associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1937–1971).A police court judge and attorney in his native Alabama, Black served as a U.S. senator from 1925 to 1937, strongly supporting President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. For this loyalty, Roosevelt selected Black as his first Supreme Court nominee in 1937.

Black's appointment was marred by reports that he had belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. While admitting past Klan involvement, Black repudiated the Klan's racism and religious bigotry. Known as one of the Court's greatest civil libertarians, Black participated in the unanimous desegregation ruling, Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Yet he also wrote—and never renounced—the majority opinion in Korematsu v. United States (1944), which sustained the federal government's forcible relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II on grounds of national security.

Black contended that judges should strictly follow the original intention behind the Constitution's provisions. Most strikingly, Black concluded that the First Amendment protects virtually all forms of speech and press, including obscenity, libel, and seditious utterances, which must be protected from government censorship. This constitutional absolutism was rooted in his affinity for Populism, the nineteenth‐century agrarian movement (especially strong in Alabama) that emphasized the need to combat government's tendency to serve powerful interests at the expense of the less fortunate.
See also Bill of Rights; Civil Liberties; Incarceration of Japanese Americans; New Deal Era, The; Populist Era; Sedition.

Bibliography

Hugo L. Black , A Constitutional Faith, 1968.
Jeffrey D. Hockett , New Deal Justice: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Hugo L. Black, Felix Frankfurter, and Robert H. Jackson, 1996.

Jeffrey D. Hockett

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Paul S. Boyer. "Black, Hugo." The Oxford Companion to United States History. Oxford University Press. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. 10 Jul. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

Paul S. Boyer. "Black, Hugo." The Oxford Companion to United States History. Oxford University Press. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. (July 10, 2009). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O119-BlackHugo.html

Paul S. Boyer. "Black, Hugo." The Oxford Companion to United States History. Oxford University Press. 2001. Retrieved July 10, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O119-BlackHugo.html

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