by Roger K. Newman (Author)
The extraordinary story of a man who bestrode his era like a colossus, Hugo Black is the first and only comprehensive biography of the Supreme Court Justice of thirty four years, (1886-1971). Once a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Black became one of the most celebrated and important civil libertarians in the history of the United States and the chief twentieth-century proponent of the First Amendment.
Newman presents us with the long odyssey of Hugo Black, capturing the man as he was--a brilliant trial lawyer, the investigating senator called by one reporter "a walking encyclopedia with a Southern accent," and the wily politician and astute justice who led the redirection of American law toward the protection of the individual.Back Jacket
Hugo Black's odyssey began in 1886 in the Alabama hill country and ended in 1971, when Americans were demonstrating in the streets. As a United States Senator from 1927 to 1937, and then for thirty-four years on the United States Supreme Court as its most passionate civil libertarian, Black fought for the rights and welfare of all people. More than a decade in the making, this moving, instructive biography is written with grace, sweep, and verve. Newman conducted more than one thousand interviews, and has drawn upon an astonishing array of other sources, including Black's family papers, to which he had exclusive access. Hugo Black is the extraordinary story of a man who bestrode his era like a colossus.
Author Biography
Roger K. Newman, a Research Scholar at New York University School of Law, has taught Constitutional Law at New York University and was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.