A political biography, probing the labyrinth of Alabama politics in an effort to discover what forces, other than his own, shaped Hugo Black and set him upon the road to the Court
 
Almost any Alabamian, white or black, unsophisticated or meagerly educated, can name one man who was a justice of the United States Supreme Court. That name may be spoken with praise or, more often, profanity, but Hugo La Fayette Black, who left Alabama for Washington in 1927, remained a presence of major, almost legendary, proportions in his native state of Alabama. He was an associate justice of the Supreme Court for so many years that most Alabamians were vague as to what he did before and how he got the job. But any gray-haired man of seventy or eighty on Twentieth Street in Birmingham will tell you quickly enough that Hugo Black, beginning in the now-dim era of the Coolidge administration,. was once United States senator.
 

“[A] crisply written, carefully researched political biography.”
—New York Times
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“Virginia Hamilton has given us a thorough, well narrated account of Justice Black’s Alabama years, with emphasis on his meteoric political advancement from police judge to United States senator. It is especially good on the Byzantine complexities of Alabama politics.”
—Journal of Southern History
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“Hamilton writes well and Alabama politics is always fascinating. As narrative history the book is outstanding, and it is easily the best study of Black’s political career.”
—American Historical Review
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