Hugo Black Takes A Trolley

Hugo Black was a U.S. Senator from Alabama who supported FDR’s New Deal. When an opening on the Supreme Court became available, the President knew he wanted an ally on the court, and Hugo Black was his first choice. If the President had done a little due diligence, he would have discovered that his candidate had a checkered past. In 1923, at the end of a trolley line in Shades Valley and by the remains of a race track and dried lake bed, the Klan had held one of the largest Klan events in the country, initiating 1,250 members, including a Birmingham lawyer named Hugo Black.