Hugo Black: The South Will Honor Its Own as Lasting Justice

Elizabeth Black is a product of the Old South. She welcomes a guest in from the rain with fresh coffee served in a china cup and cream poured from a small flowered pitcher. At 78, she is trim, upright and gracious. Her accent lingers like a summer rain in Alabama.

It was those Southern ways, learned in Birmingham, that brought her together with her late husband, Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black. Mrs. Black came north to take a job in Washington because, she said, “Hugo wanted a secretary from the South.”

Black’s fondness for his heritage was not always returned. His work during 34 years on the court helped drag the South into the 20th Century. His votes on desegregation cases prompted waves of hatred from many who believed Black had betrayed his roots.

Undeterred by Reaction

None of it deterred him. He continued to employ Southerners, sing songs of the South and carve out a piece of the South in Alexandria, Va., across the Potomac from Washington.

“He always had law clerks from Alabama or the South,” Mrs. Black said. “He was very lonely for Alabama.”

Now, the South is returning the honor.

Shortly after the 100th anniversary of Black’s birth, the University of Alabama will hold a conference of jurists, scholars and journalists in Tuscaloosa March 17 and 18 to commemorate the event. The Postal Service will issue a stamp in his likeness, and Mrs. Black has just published her fond memories of the justice’s last years (“Mr. Justice and Mrs. Black,” Random House).

“He had a love for the South and the state of Alabama,” said Justice William J. Brennan Jr., a colleague of Black’s for 15 years. “He was like one of the old prophets. He was sure the South would change once the initial reaction was behind, and he was right. He would be enormously gratified in the change of attitude toward him.”

Born on Alabama Farm

Black has long been regarded as one of the court’s great members. When he was born on a farm in Harlan, Ala., on Feb. 27, 1886, the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states, schools and other public places were segregated, and persons accused of crimes had no right to an attorney.

When Black died in 1971 at age 85, after 35 years as a Supreme Court justice, all that had changed, much of it because of his work.

“He had a persistence in his points of view in three areas--constitutional interpretation, application of the Bill of Rights to the states under the 14th Amendment and an absolutist view of the First Amendment,” Brennan said. “He brought those views with him in 1937 and hammered away at them and persisted in them.”

Black wrote the opinion that barred official prayers from public schools and the Gideon decision, which guaranteed criminal suspects the right to an attorney. He was an unyielding voice for racial desegregation and believed the First Amendment meant what it said, that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech or of the press,” even if it meant protecting libel, slander and obscenity.

He was also remembered for his mastery of language, both the written word in his opinions and the spoken word in his many speeches and lectures.

Compared to Churchill

“He was to American law what Winston Churchill was to English oratory . . . . It was not only the power of the man’s mind but the skill of his pen,” said Dick Howard, a law professor at the University of Virginia and Black’s law clerk in 1962 and 1963.

Black did stumble occasionally on his civil liberties path. He wrote the opinion upholding the relocation of Japanese-Americans during World War II and defended it years later as necessary, considering the fear and consequences of a Japanese invasion of California.

He was also a member of the Ku Klux Klan for two years, beginning in 1923. The membership was revealed just after he joined the Supreme Court, and the furor forced him to make a radio address admitting his membership and denouncing the group.

He told Mrs. Black years later that joining the KKK was the biggest mistake of his life, and the reason he joined was to have an equal chance in trying cases before Alabama jurors who were largely klan members.

There were personal crises too. His first wife, Josephine Patterson Foster, died in 1952 after 30 years with Black. He wrote that after her death it was a “dark and dreary world for me. In fact, I often thought the sun would never shine again.”

But in 1956, after the collapse of her own 30-year marriage, Elizabeth Seay DeMerrite, 48, came north to work for Black, who was then 70. The two married in 1957.

‘Like a Gray Ghost’

“He was just like a gray ghost,” Mrs. Black said. “He said he was just waiting for the cemetery but he blossomed out after I came.”

Indeed, friends say the marriage revitalized Black.

“I heard stories of the melancholy he had fallen into after his first wife’s death, and it’s clear that remarrying gave him a new lease on life,” Howard said.

“I’d go over to his house on weekends and work on opinions with him. I’d begin to fade, and he would never seem to flag. I really think the support of Elizabeth had a lot to do with it.”

Howard called the work “wonderfully adventurous and stimulating.” He said no one “could be more privileged than a law clerk with Justice Black. Nor can I think of any clerks who feel more warmly about their clerkship than Black’s clerks.”

U.S. District Judge Louis Oberdorfer, a clerk in 1946 and 1947, said: “One of the features of working for him is you became a member of his family.”

Joining that family was an entree to his Southern style of living. Howard called Black’s stately, historic home in Alexandria an “oasis of the Old South, relaxing and unpretentious.” He painted a picture of a slice of the South in the heart of metropolitan Washington, with grapevines in the yard and the smell of biscuits wafting out of the kitchen.

Mrs. Black fit right in. Born and reared in Alabama, Mrs. Black, in her book, recounted her early years as the daughter of a Birmingham doctor, who was the son of a doctor. She married just before her 17th birthday.

‘Alabama Woman’

In his brief memoirs included in the book, Black described his second wife as an “Alabama woman,” who was “sweet, kind, gentle and (had) a generous spirit.”

“She . . . radiates her sweetness, beauty and charm--day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year.”

Howard said the two had a “wonderful, close, loving relationship. It’s hard to think he could be closer to any woman alive.”

The relationship and his Southern life style “had much to do with his longevity,” he added. “He created a life style unique among the justices.”

That life style included tennis right up to his death at 85 and having clerks and former clerks come over to sing songs of the South and give an occasional rebel yell, Mrs. Black said.

One of those songs was “I’m a Good Old Rebel,” a bitter piece written by Maj. Innes Randolph, who served with J. E. B. Stuart. The words speak of hating “the Constitution” and “this great republic too.”

“Hugo would get together with his clerks and sing,” Mrs. Black said. “They used to sing the Dirty Rebel song but quit after (Alabama Gov.) George C. Wallace started acting up (fighting integration) . . . . They didn’t enjoy it as much.”

Used Song in Last Opinion

Nonetheless, Black worked part of the song, a line about Yankees dying from “Southern fever, and Southern steel and shot,” into his last written opinion, which upheld newspapers’ rights to publish the Pentagon Papers.

He said in his concurrence that “paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”

Black did more than offer Southern comfort; he changed lives.

Mrs. Black said many people at the court came to her husband for advice. She cautioned that he liked giving advice so much that it was important not to tell him too much because he liked to “meddle in your business.”

“He told me I needed a philosophy of life,” she said. “He brought me a whole bunch of dull books to read.”

Brennan, 79, said he cherished the close friendship he had with Black.

“My wife and I spent many days at dinner at his home and he at mine,” he said. “He was always a very considerate Southern gentleman in the best sense of the words.”