On This Day In Alabama History: Hugo Black Confirmed To High Court

By Alabama NewsCenter Staff

August 17, 1937

Hugo Black of Harlan, Alabama, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s nominee for the Supreme Court, was confirmed as a justice by the U.S. Senate on this day. During his more than three decades on the court, Black wrote dozens of opinions, many of them dissents that eventually became law. His judicial views about how the Bill of Rights should be applied and the separation of church and state were by and large adopted by the high court. Black joined in the unanimous 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision that outlawed racial segregation in public schools. When Black died at the age of 85 he was buried next to his first wife at Arlington Cemetery; a marble bench between their grave markers states, “Here lies a good man.”     

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.

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