Clay County AlArchives News.....The Life Story of Hugh Black  August 16, 1937
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Linda Ayres http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00031.html#0007674 February 14, 2023, 4:18 pm

Anniston Star August 16, 1937
Rise Of Alabamian, From Police Court to Highest Bench Real 'Success Story'   
This Is the first of two Intimate stories on Hugo Black, nominee for the U.S. 
Supreme Court, revealing new facts in the early life and Senatorial record of 
the Roosevelt choice. 
By NEA Service 
BIRMINGHAM, Ala Aug. 16.
It was from a budding career in the study of medicine that Hugo LaFayette Black 
turned to the career in law and politics that won him nomination for the world's 
most powerful court. 
When Black was a boy growing up in the hills of Clay County in eastern Alabama, 
it was understood that he would study medicine and join the established practice 
of his favorite brother Orlando. So, at 18, Hugo went to Birmingham Medical 
College at his brother's expense, completing a two-year course in a year. Then 
he made the decision that may considerably affect American history. 
He told his brother: I was not born to be a doctor. I want to study law. Brother 
Orlando sporting enough about it helped him to attend Alabama Law School 
In two years, Black earned his law degree with honors in what was usually a 
three-year course. 
So, at 21 he hung out his shingle in Ashland, the old hometown. Farmers and 
businessmen seemed to like Hugo, but business was bad. Later he recalled. "They 
would say I was a bright boy, but they would not give me any cases."  
Gets His "First Break" 
Prospects were quite bad enough when his office burned down. That convinced 
Black that there was no future in Ashland. With $9 in his pocket, he came to 
Birmingham. He lived in cheap boarding houses where men bunked four to a room. 
He knocked at the doors of established lawyers, asking for desk space. At times 
he didn't eat any too regularly. 
What Hugo Black calls "my first break" came when he took the case of Willie 
Morton, a colored convict who had been kept prisoner 22 days after his sentence 
had legally ended. Morton got $150 in damages; Black got $37.50. 
Politics had always interested Black, who remember an election held in Ashland 
when he was 9, And so, when he was 24 years old, 
Black was chosen Judge of municipal court. He sat on the bench for 18 months, 
grinding out the grist of petty thievery and drunks that passed through the 
police court that primary contact between the people and the law Jails were 
crowded with prisoners charged with petty offenses. Court dockets were choked. 
Black decided to run for county solicitor. In an old model T, he toured the 
rural districts electioneering, and then at 29 he was county attorney. 
His first act was to nolle prosse 500 cases against petty offenders. His next 
was to launch a campaign against professional gamblers and bootleggers. In a 
year his office was up to the docket His rigorous prosecutions cleaned up 
"Bloody Beat" near Lewisburg, where for years there had been a bloody brawl 
every Saturday night. 
In 1917 Black resigned to enter the army. Three times he received his overseas 
orders, but each time he was sent back as an instructor, so despite 28 months 
service in the field artillery, he never reached France.
He was Captain Black when he returned to Birmingham at the end of 1919. There he 
met at a party a girl wearing the uniform of a navy yeomanette. She was 
Josephine Foster, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Sterling J. Foster. Today they are 
married, and today there are Hugo, Jr, 15, enrolled fat Florida Military Academy 
at St. Petersburg, Sterling Foster, 13, who wants to be a lawyer, and Martha 
Josephine, 3 1-2.

Additional Comments:
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Black

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