He finished High School in three years (1914) and then received a scholarship, given by General and Mrs. R. D. Johnston, enabling him to enroll at the University of Virginia.
He was sent to Ft. Oglethorpe where he was enrolled in a regular army cavalry unit, then sent to a ranch in Texas and to Camp Clark, where he, as the only one in his battery who could read and write, was made Clerk.
He had attended Officers Candidate Training School at Camp Taylor, Kentucky, and was commissioned second lieutenant in 1919.
Although a Democrat and a strong Roosevelt supporter, at the urging of Grenville Clark, Arant accepted the position of Chairman of the National Committee for Independent Courts in 1937.
In 1953, at the request of the United States Attorney General, Mr. Arant agreed to serve as a member of the National Committee To Study Antitrust Laws.
In the early 1950s, he sponsored the first African-American attorney for membership in the Birmingham Bar Association – Oscar W. Adams Jr., who later became a justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.