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ID DATA

Clarence Thomas

Supreme Court Associate Justice

Age at Oath: 43
Senate Vote: 52-48
Second African-American to serve on the Supreme Court.
Until the arrival of Chief Justice Roberts, Thomas was the Court's youngest justice.

Personal Life

Poverty-stricken childhood.

Clarence Thomas was born June 23, 1948, in the Pin Point community near Savannah, Georgia. He was the second child, but first son, of M.C. Thomas and Leola (Anderson) Williams' three children. He spent most of his childhood without his father, who had abandoned the family early by moving to Philadelphia. He grew up in poverty. Their community lacked paved roads or a sewage system. People lived in destitution, earning a few cents each day for manual labor. Leola worked hard as a maid, and collecting from church charities, to care for her children.

Big changes after house burns down.

At six, the family's house burned down after his brother accidentally set a fire to it. The family moved to an apartment in Savannah. A year later, his mother decided to remarry. He and his younger brother were sent to live with her father, Myers Anderson. He owned a fuel oil business in Savannah, also delivering ice. Life there included regular meals and indoor plumbing, and the importance of a good education. After school, Thomas and his brother made fuel deliveries, working for their grandfather. In his spare time, he went to the local Carnegie library since the public library did not yet allow blacks to enter.

Attending seminaries.

His grandfather urged Clarence to become a priest. He left his black high school, after two years, to attend St. John Vianney Minor Seminary, an all-white boarding school just outside Savannah, dedicated to training priests. Despite minor episodes of racism such as schoolmates excluding him from social activiites, and making fun of his color, Thomas worked hard and graduated with a good academic record.

Graduation and marriage.

Next, he attended Immaculate Conception Seminary in Missouri but soon left due to the severe racism he encountered. After taking some time off, he enrolled in Holy Cross, participated actively in forming the Black Student Union, and also supported the Black Panthers. He once urged a student walkout to protest investments in South Africa. The day after graduation, he married Kathy Ambush, who attended a nearby Catholic women's college.

Return to Missouri.

While studying at Yale Law School, his wife gave birth to his only son, Jamal Adeen. Upon graduation many firms tried to recruit Thomas by hinting at opportunities to do pro bono work, butt this tactic simply offended him. He returned to Missouri to an opportunity to avoid involvement in any civil rights cases.

Civil rights work finds him.

While serving as legislative aide to Senator Danforth, Thomas attended a conference for black conservatives in 1980. A Washington Post columnist wrote an article about him, attracting the attention of the Reagan administration. Reagan offered him a job working for civil rights in the Education Department, and quickly promoted him to head the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). As director, Thomas supervised the entire federal effort to curb discrimination in the workplace.

Big changes at work and home.

The practices of the EEOC changed dramatically under his leadership. The use of timetables and numeric goals was abandoned. This allowed companies more flexibility in hiring minorities. The use of class action lawsuits that relied heavily on statistical evidence of discrimination was ended. Many civil rights groups were angered. During this time, his personal life was bumpy, too. His grandfather died in 1983. He and his wife divorced in 1984. Two years later he met Virigina Lamp at a conference, and they married in 1987.

Irony and Contradictions.

Although opposed to racial preference and affirmative action programs, he benefited from them. He entered the College of the Holy Cross, and Yale Law School, when these institutions began black recruitment programs. As a young lawyer, Thomas aimed his career away from civil rights yet was appointed as head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Many feel it even affected Bush I's decision to nominate him to the Supreme Court, considering the pressure he faced replacing the retiring Thurgood Marshall, the Court's first and only black justice.

Uncomfortable path to Supreme Court.

Thomas' nomination threw traditional political loyalties into chaos. Liberals who wanted to see a black justice disapproved of Thomas' conservative views. In the end, they tried to block his nomination with strong opposition, but the conservatives embraced him, including Senator Strom Thurmond.

The questioners did not shake him, but at the last minute, Professor Anita Hill came forward as a witness against him. Alleging sexual misconduct ten years earlier, the nation seemed transfixed by her testimony, followed by Thomas and a parade of corroborating witnesses. Afternoon soap operas were preempted and the World Series competed for viewers' attention. Convincing proof was never established, Hill contradicted herself, other witnesses testified for him, and the committee sent the nomination to the Senate without a recommendation.

In the end, the hearings left a big impression that there was an unspoken racial quota to fill, marking Clarence Thomas' path to the bench with the very shadow of affirmative action that he had sought to avoid.

Work Background

1991 Oct 23	Associate Justice, US Supreme Court, nominated by President George H.W. Bush, confirmed by the Senate on Oct 15, sworn in Oct 23, 1991
1990-1991	Judge, United States Court of Appeals for District of Columbia, nominated by President George H.W. Bush; stuck in committee until "documents request" was leaked to the press; negative publicity encouraged discharge from committee to Senate, where he was confirmed in March 1990.
1982-1990	Chairman, US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
1981-1982	Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, US Department of Education.
1979-1981	Legislative Assistant to US Senator John Danforth.
1977-1979	Corporate Attorney, pesticide and agriculture division of Monsanto Company, Missouri.
1975	Read "Race and Economics" by Thomas Sowell, which criticized social reforms by government, arguing instead for individual action to overcome circumstances and adversity. Thomas later said this book changed his life.
1974-1977	Assistant Attorney General, for Attorney General John Danforth, Missouri; worked in tax division, but left once Danforth won election to US Senate.
1974	Admitted to Missouri Bar.
1974	J.D., Yale Law School; specialized in tax and antitrust law.
1971	B.A., ninth in his class with an English honors degree, from Immaculate Conception Seminary, Missouri.
1967-1968	Attended Immaculate Conception Seminary, left due to extreme racism.
	A.B., cum laude, College.of the Holy Cross, a Jesuit institution in Massachusetts; helped co-found the school's Black Student Union.
	Attended Immaculate Conception Seminary in Missouri.

Native Dialect and Culture

Thomas comes from the Gullah/Geechee cultural region of coastal Georgia, and is a member of this distinct African American ethnic group. He grew up speaking the Geechee language, a hybrid of English and various West African languages. Thomas acquired an enthusiasm for his heritage, writing about it in the December 14, 2000 issue of The New York Times:

"When I was 16, I was sitting as the only black kid in my class, and I had grown up speaking a kind of a dialect. It's called Geechee. Some people call it Gullah now, and people praise it now. But they used to make fun of us back then. It's not standard English. When I transferred to an all-white school at your age, I was self-conscious, like we all are... So I...just started developing the habit of listening."

Thomas has stated that he wishes to write a book about the culture.