A Word on Words; 3416; Steve Suitts

ah go on jon so you know once again welcome go word on words our guest is steve shoots an old friend the leader of the southern legal counsel for all these years and the author of the new book on you know black and alabama the great and it's honest with you this is what they say the great you know but they're great justice hugo black know this book so to do you in depth and in great detail with the background that shaped the great supreme court justice oh i know how many years you work on but that's our audience about your commitment overall the issue well i began working on on this book as a research assistant in nineteen seventy one the year just to spot died told morgan jr a great storage warrior of alabama approach me is a young man

and said i'm telling you a quick biography of hugo black and they're in service of great so hugo black kid then in my day in alabama one of about two white southerners who had been in politics who use that word equal rights the other was big jim folsom pins and governor of alabama and getting his foibles he didn't get very far and changing hearts and minds of a lot of them but you know black was theirs are very good at it we you know we started on it and we both get distracted by other things her truck the spending a great deal of his time trying to bring the constitution alabama in the nineteen sixties and seventies and then one on the curb work on the impeachment of the president for richard nixon and i had other things to do with the southern regional council and this over the years it's taken a long time but i wanted to do it the right way and i wanted to try to explain i want to

understand our civil law were these contradictions that everyone talked about between the hugo black who was on the supreme court in hugo black who was the us senator of the ku klux klan member how did all that makes sense i would understand that and i want to get right into it took me a long time given all the other things i've tried to my life the family that the son and i hope at least will prevail provoke people to think about a time in our southern history and people of southern history may not there we may not understand as well as we think and i think it's so important as we sit here today issues surrounding this wrinkle in other states are once warming debate the a ok joel issues of weather whether past should guide the future the spring we're just isn't it does in some cases in some cases they are they reject their best in song in some other cases they

make it clear that their presses not their president or will be their future and then it's so drama now the as it was then and will be ten years from now if they're of the court's members think and the black is a special character it seems to me because it was as you would say a concoction he was a member the klan and despite that he was a member of the nine states in and despite maybe because he was a member of the klan he was a united states senator certainly he was not a supreme court justice because you want to but there is that scene at the opening of the book art where he's going back to speak to the outbound bar association for the first time since brown versus board of education and dorothy thomas the wife of a fellow this huge not too many years before that and brace you want the hugo black the great solace of great religion assuring and

dorothy is facing an tell that story because it seems to me it sets the stage for a little boy he's really he's back in alabama he's speaking before the aisle down bar association at the behest of his will or former law clerks ironically he speaking to the bar association an association which he probably didn't did not belong to his twenty years now bell goes the girl corporation will hit he he's telling the story about how after the brown versus the board which which outlawed segregation south how he got all these letters including one from a group in order that said that they would to buy him a cemetery log anywhere outside now and dorothy thomas is there surrounded by black's family has seen that yet you go you don't belong here as we need to be in a cemetery law as it were this was barely year before his own death blacks

ability and even in nineteen seventy and alabama this was in the summer and a sultry summer just after george wallace had run i deeply segregationist campaign to be albacore for governor where he took the advice of his aides as he said that and then a hollow the new holiday cheer and promise the moon anyone that hasn't had been winning for many many years and alabama and still could not accept their almost to approaching two decades after brown that one of their own a white southerner we betray them would would be responsible for destroying what innumerable alabama politicians had told them was southern civilization and they just couldn't forgive him and as the time he probably was rivaled only by frank johnson courageous federal judge in montgomery who you knew well and that came from the same county where i grew up

only frank johnson and he were probably the most hated white people of alabama by other white and it was simply because they could accept others outside the south trying to interfere with certain way but it was a sense of the trial as if their whole southern identity was being challenged by somebody who was southern and white who would say this isn't what will allow he tells the group about doesn't correspond jihad from folks in jordan and florida man who suggest another is money so he can experience they don't buy on these rules say adjoining is an for black feminist or even placed a listen rate and racial residential lending and of course he knows back to back where

my family has owned property is losers a mother's my family and he says i don't send money well you just said a moment ago that he probably didn't belong to the association because of a boy's recruiting corporations would say something else about him that is so to understanding him it was about the people he was amenable laboring people and you is a lawyer for labor and people knew the plaintiff's lawyer who went against the grain of the corporate establishment and that is ingrained and he is at that that's at the core of his being essentially it by choice would not be a part of association dominated about them here arrived in after

growing up in clay county he arrived in birmingham in the year of the first major labor dispute the miners strike of nineteen seventy and this was in this was when jim crow the whole segregation had consolidated in the south and end it wasn't a separation usual remember it was that that everything was built upon the notion of white supremacy and in that deeply segregated deep self community in and sells only industrial city hugo black began to work for an interracial union he was he was recruited by a local general counsel of the nine mine workers who was the deacon of the first baptist church where black was a member and weary later taught sunday school for twenty years and he was recruited to represent the year the puffin what miners and that experience gave hand a very quick

lesson that he had heard populous and clay county cork about but it gave him a visceral understanding of what the fight between capital and labor was all about an industrial revolution early investor of ancient america then what he saw there john was was the union believing that it could survive and it could win the strike only if it had a right to speak to toe alabama ends its side of the story it had a right to assemble its members to keep them organized in the strike it had a right to petition the government for redress and protest and systematic away when the industrialists in birmingham destroyed the strike by systematically denying those three essential part the protests were the minors and those three entitlements the union

members ended and hugo black and other lawyers claimed were what the american constitution guaranteed but of course what finally ended the strike was when the unions were accused of promoting social equality among its members and that simply move all the politicians including governor comer whose who says the governor of alabama at the time to send in the militia and a wipeout the year the miners camps and move them out of birmingham that was a hard lesson for black to learn and eight shaped new york is ongoing understandings of what was wrong with society and what had to be done to improve society you know it's interesting because as he grew in baltimore practice so he he came to birmingham with less than fifty dollars in his pocket he had no influential friends he you know he had to make as he said and at the call wall

practice by making as many friends as he could and depending on those friends of business well the friends who came to over time or poor black and white workers in the mines and mills they were segregated often in the mails sometimes they would be a poor white wooden be injured sometimes another borrowed new minute we'll be old poor poor black and in the mines where the darkness and so it didn't make a distinction everybody looked dark colored here they work together and represent them both the fact is that he he had to go into state court and convince a jury of twelve white man every week of his law practice in birmingham as to why they should award of black man a substantial amount of money from being injured in at a minor an email and why and how he did that

and he did it time after time he really built an enormously carriers on vacation sam bradford like black black victim of return and he even a move to an all white jury and he could only do that if he understood the logic by which those white george approached the issue of justice even in a segregated white supremacist society for those who just tuning in i'm talking with steve shoot about his new book you're black of alabama the story of the early and mid life and late life to have this great justice up and it was a great great time lawyer or a great judge of its great politician to london and let's get into the us the senate races the most is the most meaningful

or ways of his life in and utah girl years of honduras to work or a survivor of the part dealing with his mention the client would easily clan then he dodges and blocks later in his life and questions about what to do it well i love you explain that in some detail in and some that but he knows that it's going to be an issue and he knows he's got to get out and so he takes the steps going down in this office going to men joy to the planet then they were going to tell the story he's

he goes down and hand the end of the first national bank building from his office to james estos office the grand dragon of the clans of a lawyer and he he said that's his resignation from the klan and he does so by signing his name at home with the klan's signature of closing it is you're that's right exactly and a fateful bond so and so in the sacred bob that's right and my my notion of this is that hugo black group did not join the klan in nineteen twenty three forum for political expediency that he wasn't quite sure of that point where the klan would be statewide a powerful force he wasn't sure what race he was going to run for or there were lots of other things at work there but it didn't he didn't resign for the klan for political expediency because he knew

that that he'd did not want the klan to be a political issue in in the discussion he truly believe that those discussions were out would bring out the worst in alabama and but politically also knew that he is the asian of what he wanted to tell the people the alabama head do in fact settle on the economic issues opportunity he did the interesting thing about that race is if you read all of his campaign to europe while as a lawyer he is he talked about alabama says some ship nineteen twenty six campaign he woke he'd told alabama is that there is a greater american vision for us and in this competition between the old southern identity the old south more what he was proposing was a vision of a of joining america the aspirations for america so that in fact what he told people was that

he knew that alabama is prosperity is far less than what it could be and that if you joining in this american vision of what we as americans could be then that meant in things like roads would be paved it meant that people would have a job that many folks would get electricity on the farms that fertilizer wouldn't be exorbitant and he presented a very radical economic program for alabama and he did so both because he had come to believe it but also he did so because in he campaigned in the state for a year before the official campaign started we talk to lots of alabama ends on the effect is in this one fellow said he went so far back in the backwoods it even a crossroads has hinted that den of iniquity and he saw that there was actually enormous sentiment in alabama white poor farmers and workers for a different kind of politics and it was it was a

profoundly different kind of political rhetoric envision than anything alabama had seen since populist you know there is of the explanations why he offered for klan membership bug rings somewhat hall it's over the views and everybody's going and he says knowledge on the elk so let's go on was evocative forgotten and what he did join a lot of things not been a growth of the nightclubs he didn't join the alps i was just about the only thing he didn't join andy goode could run and as you point out but but those those those explanations sound someone a hollow it sounded to me as if he as i think back on it and as i read your book sounds to me as it is if it is an act of expediency he thinks he can join the klan

man influence your as maybe above all a corporate lawyers or members of the klan he wants to be able to compete with him but at the same time he likes to try to have it both ways that comes a time when dr dowling the public health officer been flawed because we made a decision that upset although they arie farmers and members of the klan many of them the flooding events about the balinese fog and well on the whole they want black a great lawyer on both sides they want to prosecute and i also wanted a fan and he manipulates that free well he said i think i'm a get out of it i think i'm i'm not have to do this job both sides what they want to hear and he withdraws that he'd taken part in that site and that race on either side i have no doubt it would've affected ultimately is does race for the united states and europe he was trying very carefully as time went into time went on after his joining to navigate the

treacherous politics of alabama and and it was a time when he knew wong credible accusation in a campaign have credible accusation couldn't about being true from a year long on various issues of race could destroy campaign the two great charges were being being said to phillip to two sympathetic catholics were being too friendly with causes that americans he didn't having trouble about being too sympathetic to two catholics he as a bad as he had always head days of a strong suspicion about the catholic church and it's it's her whether it believed in separation of church and state as much as the baptist tradition but on the issue i think of how his own judgment there you know there's been no there's no dna from motives and an historical data business of the war but i think what's most important is to put

ourselves back into trying to understand the choices he was making what is an ethical choice in a society where the agents of government of the primary means for violence and terror in a racist society if you run under the emblem of the democratic party which head the rooster holding up a banner of white supremacy when we considered ethical to date even run under that camp right so what word that you were the real life choices he had back then and what i hope people understand is not necessarily degree agree with my assessment of whether that what he did was politically expedient or was more complicated than that but what i don't understand is that we are we think about choices that we make in terms of choices between good and evil when he had then was the choice between

the lesser of evils and our modern society we come to imagine that the claim based on what happened in the nineteen fifties and sixties primarily the klan is the ultimate symbol of racial hatred and violence in america we would that's what that is for us our reality but here's a reality in the nineteen twenties was that the government control he thought was actually bind us troops too often was the primary agent of racial supremacy it was the government who had established an unbelievable system of convict leasing which you know he's seventy years ago it was only seventy years ago show that the state of alabama the painted primarily on convict leasing ford stayed relevant in the mid nineteen twenties convict leasing produce more revenue than any other source of taxation for the state of alabama know that

was a primary means of racial terror and racial supremacy so what what by simply taking the klan back we isolate in our memory in our understanding of southern history something which in an earlier time beyond earlier than the fifties and sixties was a society in which the government itself was fall more the agent of ritual parent i always say let's remove the rye but clearly and he denounced the flogging but clearly the floggings and the launch was there as i said it's a controversial issue ultimately that will be discussed as long we're talking about hugo black's life there are many people who simply won't accept the fact that it

was then a terrorist organization the fifties brought out the worst and expose the worst but he has taken another direction and very briefly he was a great advocate of first amendment rights of a free press where that come from well i think it started in his childhood listening to all those popular speeches where people folks would attack each other in the most literal this rule curbs and and sometimes we would try to get their debt relief by libel in the in the end the jury's in clay county with darren out they wouldn't they would unknown wouldn't know and i think it got to understand the importance of speech not only in clay county but in those miners strike when when the ability of the miners to be able to make their case to the broader public depended upon their ability to be able to speak and as you know in those situations the more effective the speech was the more often it

was denied we just a couple minutes left talk about inflation hugo black was the earliest profit of aggrieved the twentieth century's judicial revolution and what that revolution did and what he began was to create a constitutional monarchy an america in which every individual regardless of their place their race their class their gender their religion were entitled to a certain set of basic rights and those rights could be annihilated by any body in government whether they're in local counties or whether in the federal government and he established in that constitution america that the federal government had the power to solve the problem economic problems of its people when he went on the court most of the new deal reforms of franklin roosevelt had been struck down as unconstitutional by the supreme court so he in

ft joined it often by five four margin those reforms began to be approved to one point when his legacy is is that we have to date a constitutional or whether you are in alabama or wisconsin as a citizen and someone under the jurisdiction constitution you may enjoy those rights where every war and we have a country in which the federal government has the powers to deal with natural catastrophes like we've seen recently or would be enduring problems of healthcare and poor education and we linger today he'd believe the government had the power to solve problems and he believed that individuals have the right and certain and bill of rights that no one could leave we run out of time thank you so much for joining us great iou for watching for word on words and johnson in the law we agree