My Grandfather's Son

Clarence Thomas, an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, recounts his life from extreme poverty in the segregated Deep South to the nation's highest court. The memoir traces his upbringing by his grandparents, his education, his evolving political views, and the bruising 1991 confirmation battle that nearly destroyed him.

Thomas was born on June 23, 1948, in Pinpoint, Georgia, a peninsula near Savannah, among the Geechee, descendants of enslaved West Africans who lived on Georgia's barrier islands. His father, M. C. Thomas, abandoned the family; when Thomas first met him at age nine, his father promised to send watches for Thomas and his brother, Myers, that never came. Life in Pinpoint meant deep poverty, a shanty without a bathroom, kerosene lamps, and water carried in buckets, but Thomas recalls the community as idyllic, sustained by oyster shucking and crab fishing.

In 1954, after a fire destroyed their house, Thomas's mother, Leola, took the boys to Savannah, where they lived in a one-room tenement amid raw sewage and chronic hunger. The following summer, unable to support two boys on $10 a week, Leola sent Thomas and Myers to live with their maternal grandparents, Myers Anderson and Christine Anderson. Thomas calls this two-and-a-half-block walk the longest journey of his life.

Myers Anderson, whom Thomas calls Daddy, was a self-made man with only a third-grade education who ran a fuel-oil delivery business. He imposed strict discipline, declaring the boys' "damn vacation" was over. A Roman Catholic convert, he enrolled Thomas at St. Benedict the Moor Grammar School, run by Irish Franciscan nuns who taught that segregation was morally wrong. From fourth grade on, Thomas worked daily in the family business and spent summers performing grueling farm labor on family land in Liberty County. Daddy never praised or hugged the boys, insisting that hard work and education were their only path forward. When Thomas once told him slavery was over, Daddy replied, "Not in my house" (26).

In 1964, Thomas entered Saint John Vianney, a high-school-level diocesan seminary on Isle of Hope, becoming one of its first two Black students. Daddy agreed on one condition: Thomas must not quit. Thomas faced racial slurs, social exclusion, and a note reading "I like Martin Luther King . . . dead," but he excelled academically and graduated with outstanding grades. He then enrolled at Immaculate Conception Seminary in Missouri for college, but the Catholic Church's silence on racism eroded his vocation. After Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in April 1968, a fellow seminarian said he hoped King would die, and Thomas's commitment to the priesthood collapsed.

Thomas returned to Savannah and told Daddy he was leaving the seminary. Daddy, devastated by the broken promise, threw him out, predicting Thomas would end up like his absent father. Thomas moved in with his mother and succumbed to what he calls the "beast" of racial anger. He enrolled at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, one of six Black students in a class of about 550, and became corresponding secretary of the Black Students' Union. After an antiwar rally in Boston devolved into a riot, Thomas prayed for the first time in two years and vowed to purge his heart of anger. He moved away from radicalism, reading Ayn Rand and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and earned acceptance to both Harvard and Yale law schools. He chose Yale.

Thomas married Kathy Ambush the day after graduating from Holy Cross in 1971, though he harbored doubts about the union. At Yale Law School, he struggled with financial pressures and a growing awareness that affirmative action stigmatized his achievements. His son, Jamal, was born in 1973. After graduating in 1974, no law firm would hire Thomas despite his Ivy League credentials, confirming his belief that racial preference had devalued his degree. A classmate connected him with John Danforth, Missouri's attorney general, who offered him a position. As an assistant attorney general, Thomas discovered the writings of economist Thomas Sowell, whose advocacy of Black self-reliance echoed Daddy's philosophy and marked a turning point in Thomas's political thinking.

In 1977, Thomas joined Monsanto's law department in St. Louis but grew restless with corporate life. His marriage deteriorated, and he drank heavily. On his 31st birthday, he concluded that his true purpose was improving the condition of Black Americans consistent with Daddy's values. When Alex Netchvolodoff, an aide to Senator Danforth, invited Thomas to join the senator's Washington staff, Thomas accepted despite a pay cut.

In Washington, Thomas registered as a Republican and voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980, believing smaller government would benefit Black Americans. His marriage ended in early 1981. He accepted an appointment as assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education, where he hired Anita Hill, a Yale Law graduate. In February 1982, President Reagan appointed Thomas chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency responsible for enforcing workplace anti-discrimination laws. Over eight years, Thomas overhauled the agency while clashing with both liberal civil-rights groups and the Reagan administration over enforcement philosophy. Early in his tenure, he stopped drinking entirely.

Thomas's grandparents died within weeks of each other in the spring of 1983, plunging him into grief. He recommitted to their values and to his Catholic faith, vowing to live as a memorial to their lives. His son came to live with him full-time after his divorce was finalized. In 1986, Thomas met Virginia Lamp, a lobbyist for the US Chamber of Commerce, and they married the following year.

In 1989, President George H. W. Bush nominated Thomas to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. After 15 months on the bench, Justice Thurgood Marshall retired in June 1991, and President Bush nominated Thomas to the Supreme Court on July 1. Thomas testified for five days before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Senators pressed him on natural law, a tradition of moral reasoning holding that certain rights are inherent rather than granted by government. The committee split 7-7, sending his nomination to the full Senate without recommendation.

On September 25, FBI agents informed Thomas that Anita Hill, his former employee at the Department of Education and EEOC, had alleged sexual misconduct during her time on his staff. Thomas categorically denied all charges. Hill's confidential statement was leaked to the press, forcing the Senate to postpone its vote and reopen hearings. On October 11, Thomas delivered a forceful statement he and Virginia had written overnight, calling the proceedings "a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves" (281). He refused to watch Hill's testimony. Former colleagues traveled to Washington to testify on his behalf. On October 15, the Senate confirmed Thomas by a vote of 52 to 48.

Thomas was sworn in at the White House on October 18 and took the judicial oath from Chief Justice William Rehnquist on October 23. At his investiture on November 1, he met a Court deputy clerk who was the great-grandson of the midwife who had delivered Thomas in Pinpoint 43 years earlier. Walking down the Supreme Court steps, Thomas thought of the day in 1955 when he and Myers walked to Daddy's house with all their belongings in grocery bags. He prayed silently for the wisdom to know what is right and the courage to do it.