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a ee a see ; CURRENT BIOGRAPHY i The New York Public Library HUGO BLACK The man who holds one of the highest legal positions im the land never finished secondary school, never completed an undergraduate course at college. Hugo La Fayette Black was born in Harlan, Clay County, Alabama and spent the first five years of his life on a farm there, the next fifteen in the county’s metropolis of Ashland, where his father and mother, William La Fayette and Martha Ardellah (Toland) Black, ran a general store. Summers he worked, winters he attended a “primitive *sort of academy” called Ashland College. When his older brother. whe was a doctor, decided that Hugo should become a doctor, too, he fell in with his wishes enough to compleie a two-year medical course in one year at the University of Alabama. Then he decided to becomte a lawyer, switched over to the Uni- versit’s law school and in 1906 received his LL. He went back to Ashland and opened a law ofnce over a grocery store. Since the town’s population of $00 didn't allow for much legal business, it was rather a relief to Black when the grocery store buriicd down and gave him an incentive tor moying on to birmingham, In Birmingham business was better. Black Made cuisections with the trade-unions, repre- senting the miners’ union in its first Alabama sicike and the carpemers' union in an important suit, and built up a general practice as weil. Then, in 1910, he received his first judicial experience. Elected a police court judge, for 18 months he spent Ins mornings in a hot dingy courtroom disposing of defendants, mostly Negro, “hauled in for shooting craps, loafing, fighting and connubial incompatability." His next public position was that of solicitor for Jefferson County, Alabama and lasted from 1915 to 1917. - After the War, during which Black served as a captain in the S8lst Field Artillery and as adjutant in the 19th Artillery Brigade, he settled down to private law practice in Birmingham and to home life with Josephine Patterson Foster, whom he married in 1921, Although Raymond Clapper has called him “a failure as a country lawyer,” others have vouched for his ability in cross examination technique (his was always “the soft question which provokes the wrathful answer"), for his uncanny knowledge of the law's loopholes, for his success, . Tr 1926 Biack decided to campaign in the primaries for the Senate seat of Oscar Under- wood, who had announced his retirement, John Bankhead, since elected to the Senate, and three others decided to do the same thing. Undiscouraged, Black climbed into his Model T Ford and stumped the State, dressed in a wrinkled suit, sleeping at the home of any farmer who would put him up, »peaking at every crossroads store “the right words to win both Ku Klux Klan” and A F of L support. This suppert won him the norrination and eventually the election. Black made news in his first year in the Senate jist once: he was “among those present” at one of Coolidge’s famous White House breakfasts. The rest of the time he studied routine, made hinself familiar with legislative business and kept discreetly silent. When he had thoroughly prepared himself he began to battle to restare Muscle Shoals to public operation—his first Senate speech was on this. He went on to fight with Senatur Norris of Nebraska against the utility interests. It wasn’t until Roosevelt was elected, how- ever, that he came into his own. During Roosevelt's first term Black voted for each of the 24 major measures of the New Dear program and consistently supported all Jabor legislation, He himself presented a bill in the Senate for a 30-hour week and got it passed, although it never became law in its original form. Instead it was incorporated in part into the NRA, which Black, incidentally, denounced, one cf the few men in the Senate “who had thee acumen and vision to perceive precisely what the NRA was and what it would be.” From the 30-hour-week fight, Black threw himself into the problem of merchant marine subsidies. He had been working on this ever since 1628, when he had held up an appropri- ation bill carrying Coolidge’s salary in an altempt to force into it an amendment to limit the salaries of Shipping Board officials to $10,000 a year. Ta 1930 he again investigated the whole question of subsidies and by 1933 was conducting a full-fledged investigation. Sensational headlines resulted from his hear- says. He wrung out testimony “by convincing those who tuke the stand that he already has the facts but merciy wishes then. confirmed for the record out of the mouths of the witnesses.” As Raymond Clapper described it then, “armed with stacks or letters and documents, Senater Black sits back casily in his chair, puffs slowly on iis cigar, rolls his large open eyes quite innocently and with a wise smile