Hugo Black's Progressive Act to Join the Ku Klux Klan in Birmingham
(Political)

Introduction:

One of the primary enigmas of Hugo Black's life revolves around this question: how did a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, elected to the U.S. Senate by a segregated white electorate with Klansmen's backing, become the nation's first prophet of a Constitution with a truly national set of individual rights?

Questions:

1.  Hugo Black joined the Ku Klux Klan in Birmingham in 1923, seven years after the Klan began organizing in the city at the time of the massive 1916 Confederate Reunion. What was the Klan like during these years in Birmingham?

2.  What factors and conditions in Birmingham helped to give rise to the rapid growth of the Klan around Birmingham in the early 1920's?

3.  What were the differences between what the Klan believed and espoused in 1923 in Birmingham and what the white leaders in politics and business believed in?

4.  Virginia Durr, Black's sister-in-law, referred to the Birmingham Klan of this era as "an underground union."  What did she mean?

5.  In the early 1920s, what were the sources and perpetuators of most of the city's racial violence and terror?

6.  By joining the Klan in 1923 in Birmingham did Black associate himself with beliefs and actions that were significantly different from the collective beliefs and actions of the industrialists of Birmingham Country Club, Alabama Mine Operators Association, or the Birmingham Labor Council?  How so?