Hugo Black was an American lawyer, politician, and jurist who was elected as a Senator from Alabama for two terms in 1926 and 1932, before being appointed as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1937 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He eagerly supported all of Roosevelt's 24 major New Deal programs as a Senator and upheld many New Deal laws as an Associate Justice. He became known for his advocacy of a textualist approach to constitutional interpretation, and took a literal or absolutist approach to the First Amendment and the provisions of the Bill of Rights. Early on in his career, he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama and harbored anti-Catholic sentiments, which later came back to haunt him after journalist Ray Sprigle exposed his past in his 'Pulitzer Prize'-winning report on Black in the 'Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'. Nevertheless, he was one of the most influential Supreme Court justices in the 20th century and became the fifth longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history.
