With a post-war depression approaching, Birmingham explodes into political and economic warfare along lines of class and race. The 1920 US Senate race between Breck Musgrove and incumbent Oscar W. Underwood is a nasty prelude to an all-consuming miners strike where black and white members of the United Mine Workers resist the industrialists' attempts to destroy the union. Hugo Black helps lead union efforts to challenge in court the race-baiting tactics of the Underwood campaign and the union-smashing industrialists. Amid the racial rancor and class conflict, Black marries Josephine Foster, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister who pastors and lives among Birmingham's elite. The newly weds return from their extended honeymoon to Birmingham in time for Hugo Black to represent an itinerant "marrying preacher" who killed a prominent Catholic priest, Father James Coyle.

... scars of piled, blackened rocks often marked the timbered shafts that reached downward into catacombs where much of the city's industrial fortunes were unearthed by workers as dark as the coal they dug.

Miners and their families occupied wood cabins or shanties unevenly placed in crowded, rows...

Usually, the only place within miles to buy goods was the company-owned store, whose monopoly was usually reflected in higher prices. Mining companies paid their workers in "commissary checks" or scrip, a company-issued currency which could be redeemed at full value only at the company store.

On Sunday, the whole family could attend the company-owned church to hear a company-paid preacher deliver the message of the company's own God.

From Mississippi's Delta, the elder LeRoy Percy told Underwood that his defeat would have required all "courageous, conservative men to retire from public office" since the "road to public office was only open to those who truckle to the labor vote and prohibition vote and all the other 'ism' of the day."

Next day, a mail carrier found Baird's bullet-riddled body on the roadside. Within five days, local investigators followed the lynching mob's conspicuous trail directly to the encampment of Steiner's soldiers.

Union officials refused to be dragooned any longer. In a sweeping challenge of official lawlessness, Hugo Black filed suit in state court on behalf of Bill Harrison, alleging that Kilby's state law enforcement bureau was violating Harrison's rights and civil liberties guaranteed by state and federal constitutions.

The problems began, they declared, when UMW's Van Bittner arrived from the North. "Accompanying him came a band of northern negroes and northern whites . . . negro organizers and white organizers speaking from the same platform, arousing passions, inflaming feelings." The report asked: "What was the result of this invasion of negro and white organizers of the United Mine Workers of America brought to Alabama. . .? The Reign of Bloodshed and Terrorism Begins.

"Few wedding announcements have been read with greater interest than this one," remarked the society editor.

"Miss Foster has been an acknowledged belle during her young womanhood. Her beauty and winsome personality have made her a favorite wherever she has gone."

Mr. Black is a rising young lawyer, who has already made a success in his chosen profession.

Albert Lee [Smith] drove the newlyweds to the train depot· Black instructed him to drive ·to the Gracies/Calera station. On this occasion, the L&N train at Gracies came to a complete stop in order to load the newly weds' extensive luggage, and, perhaps for the first time at this depot, the conductor had to put down a stool.

"Alabama's two-by-four governor did not write the decision in the coal strike," Van Bittner bellowed at a union meeting in the coalfields. "Charley DeBardeleben . . . and the other coal operators wrote that decision." Scabs were now in the mines, Bittner told strikers. "They may have a right to work but by the eternal Gods, they haven't any right to your jobs."

UMW's International Secretary-Treasurer William Green assured the press that the union would abide by Kilby's decision. "The strike is over. It cannot and will not be renewed."

In fact, this generation of Alabamians would rarely hear again a friend or neighbor echo the thunderous proclamation spoken from the steps of Clay County's courthouse thirty years earlier, and repeated before defeat by UMW's Jacob Kennamer: "Let us have," he told black and white workers, "an equal justice to all."

With a revolver in his hand, Rev. Stephenson stepped down from the porch and walked through an opening in the hedge towards the courthouse. Men ran towards the church, and on the porch the housekeeper screamed, "Father Coyle has been shot!"

By an accident of local history, fortressed with huge, towering arches, St. Paul's Cathedral hovered next door to the Jefferson county courthouse, casting large morning shadows over the seat of government ... for Protestant fears of a Catholic Church scheming to annex the state as a creature of their faith.