what do we think of these parts of his Senate career?
In 1935, during the Great Depression, Black became chairman of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, a position he would hold for the remainder of his Senate career. On August 8, 1935, Black, who was chairman of the senate committee investigating lobbying activities, went on NBC's National Radio Forum. The national audience was shocked to hear Black speak of a $5 million electric industry lobbying campaign attempt to defeat the Wheeler–Rayburn bill, known as the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 that had passed in July. The act directed the Securities and Exchange Commission to close down the country's corrupt electric holding companies. Black gave a dramatic speech on this four-decade-long political battle.[21]
Critics of Black's lobbying committee in leading newspapers, such as the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune, described his investigative methods as both "inquisitorial" and "terroristic" and charged that his goal was to intimidate and silence anti-New Dealers. Most controversially, Black, with the full backing of the Roosevelt administration, to get FCC to order Western Union and other telegraph companies to provide access to copies to several million telegrams sent during the period of February 1 to September 1, 1935. Committee and FCC staffers examined the telegrams at the rate of several thousand per day. The committee's goal was to uncover content that had bearing on lobbying, which it defined very broadly to include just about any political commentary. People who had their private telegrams examined included every member of Congress as well as leaders of anti-New Deal organizations. When Black's investigation of these telegrams became public knowledge, there was a major outcry in the press. On March 11, 1936, Chief Justice Alfred A. Wheat of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia (later renamed the District Court of D.C.) granted an injunction prohibiting the committee from any further examination of more telegrams on the grounds that they secured though against unreasonable search and seizure: "This subpoena goes way beyond any legitimate exercise of the right of subpoena duces tecum."[22]
Black was an ardent supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.[4]: 91 In particular, he was an outspoken advocate of the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937, popularly known as the court-packing bill, FDR's unsuccessful plan to expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court.[4]: 90–91
During his Senate career, Black consistently opposed the passage of anti-lynching legislation, as did all of the white Democrats of the Solid South.[24] In 1935 Black led a filibuster of the Wagner-Costigan anti-lynching bill.[25] The Pittsburgh Post Gazette reported that when a motion to end the filibuster was defeated, "[t]he southerners—headed by Tom Connally of Texas and Hugo Black of Alabama—grinned at each other and shook hands.
