Hugo Black pt. 2

Today we learned about Hugo Black's contribution to the desegregation. After his rival resigned from the supreme court, Black was able to bring the issues that he thought were important to the table. The ruling during the Minersville v. Gobitis case was in favor of the school and the local governments, which was heavily supported by frankfurter. Black had disagreed with that because he thought that the government should be protecting the people's rights and that there was a bill of rights. The decision was reversed in Barnette v. West Virginia becuase the priorities changed. While black and Douglas were protecting the rights of the communists because they were also citizens, they were often accused of being communist supporters. Many people didn't like that they protected the communists, and the FBI wiretapped Black's home. However, another case came along that challenged the status quo, Brown vs the Board of education. There was a standing term called "separate but equal" to which Black argued that it violated the equal protection clause. Woren did help to reach the conclusion that being "separate" is not really equal which also was a major point that helped convince the other justices that segregation was wrong. While this case was a huge improvement from before, it was also a hard thing to engrain into people's heads. The Southerners were not happy about this law because they believed in white supremacy and when they had heard that Black had betrayed the white race by voting in favor of the individual, they were outraged. It might be easier to implement a law rather than change people's mind about something. This was the reason why when Black visited his hometown, Alabama, he had to wear a bullet proof vest because there were so many people that wanted to kill him, especially the many members of the KKK that he had betrayed. However, for there to be change, there has to be someone willing to take on the risk, and in this case, Black took the risk in order to improve the judicial system.