ABSTRACT
Arriving as a complete outsider in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1907 to begin his legal career, Black received no invitation into an establishment firm, but began to scratch out a living as a personal injury attorney representing the working man and sympathizing with unions. Ironically, the Junior League helped awaken the political sensibilities of Josephine and Virginia by bringing them into contact with the grim realities of poverty and racial injustice. This well may have played a part in Senator Black's broadening notion of justice and fair play. For Hugo Black, liberty and responsibility were not separate values, but necessarily were linked as the defining dimension of his public philosophy. His public philosophy mixed Old Testament requirements and Jeffersonian ideals in a way that could have been accomplished only by a great man who came naturally by both sources of wisdom in his native Clay County, Alabama.
