Re: 50 - re: KKK, I have to find the article, but Black in later life stated that in the 20’s to have any chance to make a difference in State office in Alabama, being associated with or in the KKK was pretty much required.
I look at it as he joined to get into local / State office and then dropped them. Later in life he was a reviled figure in Alabama, especially for Brown and other school integration cases.
He may have been a liberal justice, but he was for total Incorporation of 1st - 8th Amendments, and was against substantive due process and unenumerated rights. He blew a gasket in his dissent in Griswold v. Connecticut and its “penumbras and emanations”.
I forgot to note that Black believed that the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment was the preferred way for Incorporation and not the Due Process Clause.