The struggle to accommodate both individual freedom and community welfare shaped modern America. American have disagreed about whether federal protection of national welfare could be reconciled with defense of individual rights; however, no public figure worked longer or more consistently to meet this challenge than Alabama's Hugo L. Black

This collection of essays, reprints of the spring 1985 and winter 1987 issues of the Alabama Law Review with a new introduction and minor revisions, suggests that Black's constitutional principles and personal values provided a means to achieve a balance between majority will and individual freedom. Black's life and career are reexamined here by leading scholars and jurors in the first major study in twenty years, tracing his relationship to the South, to the development of American liberalism, and to the constitutional revolution in individual rights. Contributors include, in addition to the editor, Howard Ball, Justice William Brennan, Jr., Irving Dilliard, Gerald Dunne, Harry Edwards, Arthur Goldberg, Sheldon Hackney, Virginia Van der Veer Hamilton, Jean McCulley Holcomb, Anthony Lewis, Paul L. Murphy, Timothy O'Rourke, Norman Redlich, David Shannon, Abigail Thernstrom, Cherry Thomas, J. Mills Thornton III, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown.