Invoking his own version of good citizenship and the Golden Rule, Hugo Black becomes a special assistant US attorney general with the help of Alabama Attorney General Harwell Davis and other prohibitionists. He prosecutes the "ring leaders" and "big men" of Mobile, including future Congressman Frank Boykin, who were indicted for making the city a major US port of entry for illegal liquor. The Mobile trials are suspended temporarily for the Democratic National Convention where Senator Oscar Underwood loses his bid to use sectional loyalty and the Klan to become the party's nominee. In early 1925, Black also argues a case for the first time before the US Supreme Court as he continues his attack on the convict lease system.

While it closely observed the South's terms for racial supremacy, Mobile was forever out of line with the state's prevailing moral agenda.

Many Protestant leaders believed that Mobile's large Catholic population was another reason for the city's open defiance. ...The city had a noticeable number of prominent Catholic institutions: one of America's oldest Catholic colleges, several parochial schools (often outnumbering white public schools), hospitals, orphanages, convents, charities, and fraternal groups. It was also headquarters for the state's Catholic bishop and staff.

Alabama's Attorney General Harwell G. Davis secured Black's appointment.... He kept promising to give me the authority for Hugo," Harwell Davis remembered of Daugherty, whom he called a "big Irish crook."

A straight-laced President Calvin Coolidge and an honest, determined U.S. Assistant Attorney General in charge of prohibition, Mabel Walker Willebrandt, encouraged strict law enforcement.

By the end of March, Black had taken up temporary residence at Mobile's Cawthan Hotel where several months earlier, in rooms rigged with special mirrors and peep holes, undercover agents received protection money and liquor under the watchful eye of federal officials.

... the federal court docket at the Old Customs House a few blocks away was crowded with dozens of cases of buying, possessing, and selling liquor.... Overcrowded, the historic, elegant courtroom resembled a hare's warren with narrow passageways between mounds of people.

By local custom, juries had been drawn in cases arising in Mobile only from Mobile County and the small, adjoining Baldwin County, but Black now asked the court to require the clerk to draw names for a jury venire exclusively from the other eight Black Belt counties in the federal district.

The most sensational witness was "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas, a special agent who became a confidante of Mobile's wholesale bootleggers. Destined to become a famous Texas Ranger, Lone Wolf described how six big wholesale dealers rendezvoused with booze runners at sea and clandestinely shipped whiskey to customers across North America.

In late June 1924, many Alabamians were turning their attention to the Empire State where, for the first time, American radios would broadcast a national political convention and where Alabama's own Oscar W. Underwood would try to become the first Deep South politician since the Civil War to become President.

.... the Underwood camp hoped for a stalemate forced by the two-thirds rule and the countervailing strength of the two leading candidates, Woodrow Wilson's son-in-law, William McAdoo of California, and New York Governor Al Smith.

In New York City's summer heat, in the mammoth brick second location of Madison Square Garden, scheduled for demolition shortly afterwards, the Democratic National Convention was gaveled to order at midday on Tuesday, June 24. It did not adjourn for two and a half weeks, the longest convention in American history.

William Jennings Bryan, the ageless Great Commoner who had been the party's nominee at three past conventions as far back as 1896, supported the majority resolution. "...We said, 'Strike out three words [Ku Klux Klan] and there will be no objection.' But three words were more important to them than the welfare of a party... It was Christ on the Cross who said, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' And, my friends, we can exterminate Ku Kluxism better by recognizing their honesty and teaching them that they are wrong (Boos and hisses, followed by applause)."

Alabama Governor Bill Brandon, who had the voice of a bullfrog in the body of a tadpole, began each ballot with... "Alabama casts twenty-four votes for Oscar W. Underwood." ...delegates and spectators throughout the Garden joined Brandon during each roll call in a rousing chorus of "Alabama casts twenty-four votes for Oscar W. Underwood." It was the only unity among delegates.

John W. Davis, a Wall Street lawyer who had served the Wilson administration, took the lead ... The Democratic party, at long last, had its nominee.

Three decades after the 1924 Convention, another U.S. Senator, a Catholic Democrat from Massachusetts who would become President, remembered Oscar W. Underwood's campaign as one of America's significant Profiles in Courage... In truth, Kennedy's portrayal was a Yankee's stereotypical understanding of Southern politics.

In 1924, as a self-described "militant Christian" and "good citizen" following an Old Testament interpretation of both Christ in the Temple and the "Golden Rule," as a Klan Kladd who refused to give up his own democratic citizenship while he initiated others into secret "citizenship," as a "yellow-dog" Democrat serving in a corrupt Republican administration, as an Assistant U.S. Attorney General attacking the people who appointed him, as a Kluxer leading the attack on Alabama's convict lease system, Hugo Black saw himself as the antithesis of the demagogue.

Harlan Fisk Stone, the new U.S. Attorney General, had divided most of his career between teaching in Columbia University Law School's classrooms and a New York corporate practice. President Coolidge chose Stone to demonstrate that the Justice Department would be administered honestly after Daugherty was forced out. A large man with a professional manner and mood, Stone was under consideration for an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court at the time he met Black.

Back in Alabama, Black took General Stone at his word. On February 10, the Special Assistant U.S. Attorney General called his first witness in the case against Frank Boykin... Frank Boykin and William Holcombe were guilty of attempted bribery. Judge Grubb sentenced both men to the maximum term, two years in federal jail. At last, in the last possible trial, Black had secured the convictions of two ring leaders.

Far from commemorating a new victorious day for prohibition, Mobile citizens were welcoming Mardi Gras... The presiding official for this year's days of paradise, King Felix III, was Francis H. Inge, a young lawyer and son of one of the chief defense attorneys whom Black had faced...

Amid the extravagant, drunken merriment, Hugo Black solemnly turned away towards the city's rail terminal, where snarling gargoyles of Spanish baroque architecture symbolically guarded the city's traditions and influences against all who trespassed.