Chapter 7 (131 kb, PDF)

Returning to Birmingham courtrooms after World War I, Hugo Black represents Mary Miniard, a young white mother married to a semi-skilled worker at US Steel's Ensley plant. The case involves a series of incidents on the Illinois Central Railroad as the Minairds and their baby returned to Birmingham from Chicago in 1919. It is a case that plays out above and below the Mason & Dixon line with Jim Crow, Southern ladies, Northern corporations, class and caste, and the families of Walker Percy and Zelda Fitzgerald.

This passage covers Black's examination of his own client as well as a railroad conductor amid the 1919 conditions of the Deep South and the nation.