Hugo Black of Alabama

President Warren G. Harding comes to Birmingham to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Birmingham, a city now deeply wounded by its recent internal struggles over race, class, and religion. Maintaining a very rewarding law practice, Hugo Black challenges the state convict lease system and its slavery-like practices as the city's Protestant white residents become enthralled by the marketing-savvy appeals of the Ku Klux Klan. As he navigates his own convictions, obligations, and ambitions amid the City's cauldron of concerns and conflicts, Black joins the Klan. A few weeks later, he appears in court on behalf of Alabama's poor African Americans whose labor and lives are being sacrificed in the name of industrial profits and good government.

These passages capture some aspects of Alabama's unique legal system of convict leasing and Black's consideration of Klan membership.