What US Supreme Court justice from Alabama was once a member of the Klu Klux Klan?

Answer 1

Hugo Black, whom President Franklin Roosevelt appointed to the US Supreme Court 1937, joined the Robert E. Lee Klan No. 1 of Birmingham, Alabama, on September 13, 1923.

The information was discovered by an enterprising, young investigative reporter whose coverage of the story won a Pulitzer Prize and created a scandal for the Roosevelt administration and the Senate that recently confirmed Black by a wide margin. The general public was horrified, and rightfully skeptical about Black's ability to make unbiased decisions on the bench.

In a radio address given shortly after the news broke, the new justice claimed his participation in the organization had been brief -- he resigned in 1925 -- and limited to marching in a few parades and giving speeches. He said he had admonished the members to withhold violence and be law-abiding citizens, and alleged the group had been more of a fraternal organization in those days than a gang of terrorists. While this did little to calm the public's fears, the scandal was soon overshadowed by the start of WW II and quickly faded from the media.

Black's record of jurisprudence during his years on the Court was sometimes contradictory, but predominantly liberal. He supported civil rights and pressed for immediate integration of schools following Brown v. Board of Education, (1954), but had also argued in support of Executive Order 9066, which ordered Japanese-Americans into internment camps, in the case Korematsu v. United States, (1944). Black was an ardent supporter of the First Amendment who believed even libel and slander should be protected speech, but conversely took a strong stand for restricting the time and place when free speech could be exercised.

Justice Black never truly considered himself a Klansman, and disavowed racist leanings, telling a New York Times reporter in a 1967 interview intended for publication after his death, that he only joined the racist organization to win favor with white juries.

"You want to know the main reason I joined the Klan?" He asked the reporter.

"I was trying a lot of cases against corporations, jury cases, and I found out that all the corporation lawyers were in the Klan. A lot of the jurors were too, so I figured I'd better be even-up. I haven't told that before, but that's how it was. People think it was politics, but it wasn't politics. I wanted that even chance with the juries."

Nevertheless, some of Black's comments belied unacknowledged bigotry. In defending his opinion in Korematsu, the justice stated (in part):

"They all look alike to a person not a Jap. Had they [the Japanese] attacked our shores you'd have a large number fighting with the Japanese troops. And a lot of innocent Japanese-Americans would have been shot in the panic. Under these circumstances I saw nothing wrong in moving them away from the danger area."

In other areas, such as using the Fourteenth Amendment to completely incorporate the first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights to the States, Black's thinking was radical and egalitarian.

Hugo Black made a significant contribution to society during his tenure on the Court, but his memory is tainted by a degree of bigotry, making it challenging to acknowledge his positive attributes without being an apologist for his obvious flaws.