Early Praise for Hugo Black of Alabama

Rheta Grimsley Johnson, Atlanta Journal Constitution:

"Anyone thinking that Deep South politics and race relations in the past century were simple black-and-white matters should read Steve Suitts' amazing account of the childhood and early career of Alabama's Hugo Black ... From careful looks at turn-of-the-century Populists, to public education, to labor union wars, this beautifully written biography is more than Hugo Black's story. It is a clear look at an unruly Alabama --- what it was, and what it became because of what it was --- and the South as a whole ... Fair-minded souls cannot read Suitts' tome without learning something new --- about lawyer Hugo Black, Alabama, the South and themselves.

Read the full review from the Atlanta Journal Constitution, July 17, 2005

Paul M. Gaston, Professor Emeritus of Southern and Civil Rights History, University of Virginia:

"Biographers and historians have long wondered how it could be that Hugo Black, once a shrewd Alabama politician and even a Klansman, could become the nation's preeminent advocate of constitutional rectitude, justice, and equal rights.  Until Steve Suitts came along that question was hard to answer.  Now, in this beautifully written story of Black's early life we learn how the complexities of a man's life defy the common urge to quick judgments and easy stereotypes.  This rich and superbly executed work should become a model for unraveling the apparent contradictions in the lives of great figures in our history."

Anthony Lewis, New York Times Pulitzer Prize winner for Supreme Court coverage:

"This book is a riveting account of the forces that shaped Hugo Black into the man I think was the most remarkable Supreme Court justice of the 20th century.  He was, as his wife Josephine said, an 'irresistible force'--and here are the origins and development of his character.  His role as a libertarian judge made him anathema in Alabama for decades, but he was always a son of Alabama."

Richard A. Brisbin Jr., Law and Politics Book Review:

"... an impressive piece of scholarship that illuminates not only the education of a justice but almost forgotten harshness and brutality of Southern law and politics in the age before Hugo Black joined the Supreme Court."

To read the full review, click here.

Sheldon Hackney, professor of History, University of Pennsylvania and former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities:

"In rich detail, and with a wealth of eye-witness testimony, Steve Suitts lets the reader see why Hugo Black was a great man, and how he fell short of perfection.  In particular, Black's membership in the Ku Klux Klan, and the role of the Klan in Alabama in the 1920s, is analyzed in a completely fresh and honest way.  This vivid portrait of Mr. Justice Black from his rural roots to his success in the raw industrial city of Birmingham is full of insight and understanding.  It leaves me hoping for the volumes on the Washington years soon."

Midwest Book Review:

"This superbly researched and written biography of Hugo Black recreates for the reader the times in which the Deep South was bound up by traditions of white supremacy and how a Southern white man developed a judicial philosophy and temperament to help end America's legal segregation and restore a simple justice ... Biographer Steve Suitts provides new and pivotal information as he lays out the story of Black's personal and public life, provides new perspectives on the sweeping forces that shaped the destiny of Black's life, and the struggle for racial justice in the first quarter of the 20th century. A work of impressive and accessible scholarship, Hugo Black of Alabama is a highly commended addition to community and academic library American Biography and Judicial History collections.

Joseph O. Patton, Capital City Free Press:

"Hugo Black of Alabama is an absolute necessity... Suitts' solid approach to this work is admirable. His attention to detail, exhaustive research and ability to make such mass amounts of information palatable, solidify his credentials ... He has deftly employed subtle wit and a natural gift for storytelling...."

George B. Tindall, Kenan Professor of History Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

"One thing is sure to be the focus of attention in this book, Hugo Black's joining the Ku Klux Klan in 1923.  Suitts makes a persuasive case that it was a progressive step and not an act of bigotry.
But the book does far more than that.  Hugo Black is a labor of love, the product of twenty-five years' research and a forceful style of writing.  A vivid account of a young lawyer's career on the way to the United States Senate, it also details the perennial struggle between cultural and economic values, Alabama style, in the first third of the last century."

Alex Willingham, Professor of Political Science and Chair of the African American Studies Department, Williams College:

"This book is a prodigious research effort drawing on primary sources and loaded with detail on an emerging New South as one man maneuvers his way through its conflicts involving race, populism, prohibition and temperance, and woman's suffrage - at a time of a consolidating system of racial segregation (eliminating blacks from political life but not the new economy).  Renegade capitalism had provoked aggressive labor organizing, making the state, and certainly the city of Birmingham, unique in the region, as did the relatively numerous whites outside Protestant Christian identities ensuring thus a fledgling white-race diversity that does not fit the simple bi-racialism we expect in the region.  That diversity is a factor in the author's handling of the most controversial episode in Black's Alabama years, i.e., his role in the Ku Klux Klan where White Supremacy was compounded with prejudice against Catholic Christians and Jews.  Suitts is candid about his man's transgressions and, in part to rescue him, cautions the reader not to accept an essentialist notion of the Klan.  Better to see it as a movement taking form in historical moments where priorities and tactics change and, more speculatively, to see the formation of this moment as having some benign appeal based on authentic values that predate the KKK - pious whites saw such values violated in the way elected officials handled the public business and in the treatment of workers by the mill owners.  Readers will be fascinated by the author's handling of this material, amounting to an argument with himself about how really to see the character of the subject of his work."

"Hugo Black of Alabama is a refreshing reminder of the richness in the development of the region, the benefits of biography for understanding politics and, a subtext here, the exceptionalism of Alabama in the South.  It comes at a time when our expectations about Southern politics have been rekindled even as writing about the subject has become increasingly academic, dry, and stifling."

Norman Dorsen, Stokes Professor of Law, New York University:

"A rich and thoroughly researched account of Hugo Black's early years in an Alabama still reeling from the Civil War.  The book illuminates the political, economic, class, racial and family forces that shaped one of the nation's most influential and controversial Supreme Court justices."

Tony Freyer, Research Professor of History and Law, University of Alabama:

"Steve Suitts' book alters our perception of Hugo L. Black's Alabama origins to focus on the less familiar instances of social activism, including the trial lawyer's defense of poor whites and blacks against Birmingham's entrenched system of wealth and power, struggle to preserve United Mine Workers' interracial unionism, and battle to save indigent black prisoners from the deadly convict mine system.  The emphasis upon Black's social activism leads to Suitts' provocative conclusion that Black joined the Ku Klux Klan as a result of the commitment to "ethical responsibility", resigning, ironically, because of political expediency.  This controversial assessment reveals new dimension's of the South's and the nation's struggle with racism and social justice."