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MICHAEL: James, are we keeping the glasses on or off?
CAMERAMAN: The only issue is that because they're bifocals
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
there's a line going through his eyes.
MICHAEL: Do you need them on, Justice Thomas?
No.
I wear them, that's my normal--
I normally have glasses on.
Not on the cover of your book.
CLARENCE: Well, except for the cover of my book I normally wear--
[laughs]
MICHAEL: Justice Thomas, how did you decide you wanted
to become a lawyer?
You look around society and you see, its laws.
Laws affect everybody.
If you're poor, and you look at people
like my grandfather,
I think of when he came home one day,
and he was very upset,
and he was taking a drink.
He never took a drink in the middle of the day.
CLARENCE: Well what had happened was, he was driving the oil truck,
a police officer stops him
for having too many clothes on,
and that's ridiculous.
He has no way of challenging that.
So the law, he ran into the law
and he always was afraid of that.
You couldn't walk across certain parks;
you couldn't go to certain schools;
people's property being taken; people taking advantage of him
because they could say "The law did this" or "Did that."
So I decided I was going to go to law school.
Senator BIDEN: Judge Thomas, do you solemnly swear to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Judge THOMAS: I do.
Senator BIDEN: Please be seated.
Let me look a little bit from your life and history,
you are somewhat an enigma.
You have gone through many changes in your life.
Which brings us to the question:
what is the real Clarence Thomas like?
Judge THOMAS: The person you see is Clarence Thomas.
I don't know that I would call myself an enigma.
I am just simply different from what people painted me to be.
My earliest memories are those of Pin Point, Georgia,
a life far removed in space and time from this room,
this day and this moment.
♪ Moon river ♪
♪ Wider than a mile ♪
♪ I'm crossing you in style ♪
♪ Someday ♪
♪ Oh ♪
CLARENCE: We were isolated.
It was a community.
You could see the river from there.
You hear of the song Moon River,
Johnny Mercer's from Savannah.
♪ Wherever you're goin', ♪
♪ I'm goin' ♪
CLARENCE: I am descended from the west African slaves
who lived on the Barrier Islands and in the low country
of Georgia, South Carolina and coastal northern Florida.
In Georgia my people were called Geechees,
in South Carolina, Gullahs.
It was just a distinctive culture, it was West African.
It had a mixture of English, and other words,
with kind of a diction that was somewhat
difficult to understand.
(Geechee music)
(♪)
I know when I first went down to Pin Point I said
"Clarence, I can't understand a word that they just said"
because they talk in a dialect.
So I just try to listen and smile.
CLARENCE: I was born at home, right on Shipyard Creek in 1948.
My mother always I was too stubborn to cry, and I guess
that was a sort of indication of the kind of person I would be.
A middle child.
My mother had all of us, we think, before she was 20.
And then she and my father separated when I was a toddler.
So I would have no early memories of him.
I have memories of other family members, but he wasn't there.
He wasn't among the family members.
[♪]
CLARENCE: Many of the men raked oysters
during the winter, and caught crabs,
and fish in the spring and summer.
Their boats, which were called bateaus,
could be heard far away in the marshes.
They would slowly emerge from the labyrinths
of surrounding creeks and pull up to the dock
where the day's haul was unloaded.
The women picked crab; people like my mother, and my relatives
did that at the crab factory.
And they also shucked oysters-- all of which is hard work.
Well, when they were gone, we were on our own.
We were off on our adventures.
[♪]
We would catch minnows in the creek.
We would walk along the water's edge,
throwing oyster shells.
Most people didn't have store-bought toys.
So, you had lots of old tires that had gone bad.
If you go back to the movie, To Kill a Mockingbird--
JEM FINCH: You Ready?
SCOUT FINCH: Uh-huh, let her go.
CLARENCE: Scout, the young girl,
when she is pushed into Boo Radley's yard, she's in a tire.
I have no idea how kids today can have any idea
what they were doing with her inside a tire.
We always did that.
I remember years later reading Huck Finn, and Tom Sawyer,
and wondering what the fuss was about.
We had done a lot of those things.
One day I came home someone said there had been a fire.
And we get there, and this little shack that we had
all been living in was just ashes and twisted tin.
Everything that you ever knew in life is just there,
I mean it's smoldering.
[♪]
CLARENCE: When I was a boy Savannah was hell.
My mother lived in one room in an old tenement
with an outdoor bathroom.
That is the worst place I've ever lived.
And so, you had the contrast between rural poverty,
which is what we had in Pin Point, which was very livable.
And then you had urban squalor, and that was horrible.
Whenever you flushed the toilet, or someone else flushed,
it didn't actually go in the sewer system.
It went in somebody else's yard.
My all encompassing word is gross,
I mean it was putrid.
It was the smell of raw sewage.
There were these boards, people would make these sort of
makeshift paths to get across the just,
the gross wetness in the back yard.
Savannah is still a segregated city.
[♪]
One of the major parks downtown is a rectangle, Forsyth Park.
You were never allowed to walk to the interior of that park.
That's how I figured out the word "circumnavigate."
You would walk around.
You could not go across the park.
[♪]
I was supposed to go to school in the afternoons
and my mother wasn't there to make me go,
because she had to go to work, so I wandered
the streets by myself.
I was six.
[♪]
You were hungry, and didn't know when you'd eat, and cold,
and didn't know when you'd be warm again.
My mother had difficulty with two little boys
and working as a maid.
So she asked my grandparents for help.
And my grandmother suggested that she let--
her raise these two boys.
And one day, one Saturday morning we w--, we woke up,
and my mother said "Put all your things in the grocery bag."
And remember the paper grocery bags in those days,
and my brother took one, and neither one was full.
But we, all of our items, just imagine everything you have
in less than a paper bag.
So, we took our grocery bag each,
and walked the couple of blocks from Henry Lane,
to East Thirty-Second Street.
[♪]
That was the longest, and most significant journey
I ever made, because it changed my entire life.
[♪]
My grandfather was this myth.
He was very stern.
And he sat us there at the kitchen table,
and he said "Boys, the damn vacation is over."
And he said from then on it was going to be
"Rules and regulations" and "Manners and behavior."
Oh my goodness, and he meant it, and he just explained what
the rules were: my grandmother was always right,
that he was in charge.
He made it very clear that it was by grace that we were there
- his grace.
And the door in 1955 when we went to live with him
was swinging open, inward, and if we didn't behave ourselves
there'd be a day when it would swing outward
and we'd be asked to leave.
They lived in this new house, and it was beautiful.
For us, it could have been a palace.
We had never been in a house with a bathtub,
beautiful white porcelain toilet.
My brother and I, one of our activities was to flush
that toilet every time we had a chance.
I mean we would walk by and flush the toilet.
And my grandfather said, he would chastise us and said you,
as he would say "You're runnin' up my damn water bill."
Beautiful, as we used to say back then, modern kitchen
with a refrigerator, etc. and lots of food.
And my grandmother would just lavish you with those things.
My grandmother was as sweet as she could be
she would always be saintly.
By the time we went to live with my grandfather
he was delivering fuel oil.
The rule was: we got out of school at 2:30;
you had to be home, dressed, and ready to be
on the oil truck by 3:00.
[♪]
When you rode with him, he was the professor.
You could not initiate a conversation,
so you were constantly getting this one-way input.
He thought that we were destined to have to work for everything
because of what happened in the Garden of Eden,
and because of our fallen nature; we would have to earn
everything by the sweat of our brow
- that was biblical.
And we would have to work from sun to sun-- biblical.
The philosophy of life that he had came from biblical sources.
On Christmas Day 1957, we went to the place where
he had grown up, which we called the farm.
[♪]
The 60 acres had been passed down undivided from generation to
generation as was customary with land owned by Southern blacks.
[♪]
And every summer after that we farmed.
He thought that we needed to be kept busy during the summer.
And he didn't want us around our no good friends in the city,
and "That riff raff."
He said idle hands were the devil's workshop.
Your time is dominated by labor
and there's a lot of it, from sun to sun.
He started plowing with Cousin Jack's horse, Lizzie,
which was a very spirited animal,
and we would go running behind them.
We cut down trees, and he would always do it manually,
you didn't use a chainsaw, you used a cross-cut saw.
It seems like everything was made to be doubly hard.
You're a little kid you say you can't do it.
And he would just say over and
"Old man can't is dead, I helped bury him".
CLARENCE: You're building a fence line.
You had to learn how to stretch barbed wire.
If you did something stupid he would say to you "You know what?
If I could cultivate your head down to the size of your brain,
a peanut hull would make you a sun hat."
Now that's not exactly a compliment.
CLARENCE: You had to learn how to gut fish.
You don't want to be there and up to your eyebrow in scales
and fish guts, and the smell.
And then the accompaniments: the flies, the gnats,
the mosquitos etc.
And you'd say would you want to give up.
And he said, "You can give out but you can't give up."
My grandmother would say like "You should give them
a compliment or do this."
And he said "No, that's their job to do it right."
The family farm and our unheated oil truck
became my most important classrooms,
the schools in which my grandfather passed on the wisdom
he had acquired as an ill-educated modestly successful
black man in the deep south.
My grandfather understood that education was the key because
he didn't have it, and that's what held him back.
And he said that he went to third grade but school
was three months out of the year because you had to work.
MICHAEL: Could he read the Bible?
He could he could make out certain words in the Bible.
When he got a portion of it, like most of the,
of the people I knew, most were uneducated,
and most were functionally illiterate,
and many were totally illiterate.
They would get a part of the Bible that they would memorize
or that they knew the story and that would become apart
of their lexicon.
CLARENCE: He had gone his own way and converted
to Roman Catholicism in 1949.
It followed that Catholic schools had to be
better than public schools so he sent my brother and me to one.
Remember now I am seven years old.
My brother is six and he says to us "You are going to go
to school every day, and if you are sick,
you are still going, and if you die, you will go.
I will take your body for three days and make sure
you're not faking", and he meant it.
The thing about it is, it's one thing if somebody says it,
and you think they're exaggerating.
He wasn't that kind of guy.
[♪]
CLARENCE: The Catholic schools were very orderly.
My brother used to say "When you walked in there
you could hear a gnat tiptoeing across cotton."
[♪]
It was segregated.
The nuns didn't much appreciate the fact that blacks
were treated that way.
They were mostly Irish nuns, and they were outspoken too.
Oh God, I love it.
They were on our side from day one.
[♪]
You knew they loved you.
And when somebody, when you think somebody loves you
and deeply cares about your interests, somehow,
they can get you to do hard things.
Sister Mary Virgilius, my eighth-grade teacher,
when she saw my entrance exam scores to high school,
she looks me in the eye in 1962 and says "You lazy thing you."
In other words, I was underachieving.
It was actually accurate, and I've never forgotten it.
most dependable altar boys, I had also been thinking about
the possibility of becoming a priest.
A few months shy of my 16th birthday I decided
I wanted to enter St. John Vianney,
the diocesan minor seminary, to prepare for the priesthood.
So, I told my grandfather who wasn't initially
all that excited, because it was expensive,
and I remember when he took me to the front porch,
to have a talk,
and I told him that I thought I had a vocation,
and it would be great.
And he said, "Well, if you go you know you can't quit."
[♪]
I showed up one Sunday evening with my grandfather.
He drove me there and he dropped me off, and then he left.
And so I'm there by myself, and I look around-
I'm the new kid, so I'm the outsider, and I'm black.
So, obviously I didn't fit right in.
So, I was like "What the heck?"
MICHAEL: Did you have kind of a fear of failure, in the early days?
It's a new world in every way.
It's a foreign world.
And the work level, the work is much more demanding.
So obviously that would create the sense in you
that I may not be able to, to live up to the expectation.
[♪]
Father Coleman said to me that I would not be considered
the equal of whites if I didn't learn
how to speak standard English.
As much as it hurt, there was some truth to it.
I'm some place between my dialect,
and quote unquote talking "Southern."
But certainly nothing close to standard English.
But internally, I vowed to learn English,
and that no one would be able to ever say that about me.
CLARENCE: We were doing Robert Frost and we came across this poem:
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one
less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
[♪]
And what I was thinking was; someplace in my life
the roads had split off, I was no longer in the world
that was my comfort zone.
[♪]
I had gone to the seminary, I had gone to all-white schools
and then it's made all the difference.
What was that difference?
That, I didn't know.
I was never going to be a part of that world;
I was never going to be white.
The problem is I could never go back completely
to the world I came from.
I loved the contemplative life.
I loved Lauds, which was the morning prayers,
vespers, evening prayers.
I loved the Gregorian chant.
Academically, I did very well.
MICHAEL: So what was the caption alongside your photo?
CLARENCE: I think it's "Blew that test, only a 98."
Here was my thinking, you assume you're going to be
discriminated against,
or at the very least you're not going to
be treated the same way as whites.
So, I can't get a 98.
And if I'm going to force someone to have to
discriminate against me, then I have to have a hundred.
In other words, leave them nothing but race,
to force them. It's sort of like, checkmate.
OK?
In those days the Catholic church
had little to say about racism.
It seemed self-evident that the treatment of blacks
in America cried out for the unequivocal condemnation
of a righteous institution.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR: Well, there may be some tear gassing ahead.
I say to you this afternoon that I would rather die on the
highways of Alabama than make a butchery of my conscience.
POLICE: See that they turn around and disperse.
CLARENCE: Yet, the church remained silent
and its silence haunted me.
I prayed for guidance in the presence
of the Blessed Sacrament
but instead of comfort I found
only sorrow and confusion.
One day we were sitting in class, I don't know,
maybe history class, or something.
People pass notes from time to time, so I get a note;
the note said "I like Martin Luther King",
and then you open up, it's a small note,
you open up the inside, and it just had the word, dead.
You have a range of emotions: disappointment, anger.
You want to lash out.
You want to yell.
In the spring, when I was walking back into the hall.
Someone was down watching TV, and he yelled out
from the basement as I was walking in the dorm.
He said "Martin Luther King has just been shot."
NEWSCASTER: Dr. King was standing on the balcony of a second-floor
hotel room tonight when,
according to a companion, a shot was fired from
across the street.
CLARENCE: And the seminarian in front of me said "That's good.
I hope the son of a bitch dies."
And that was pretty much the end of me.
That was it.
Because that was the opposite of what I thought you said
about a man of God and what a seminarian,
or the church, should do.
To the extent that I had any ambivalence, it ended that day.
The priesthood had been my only goal, and when that went away
it was like I was in a free fall.
So anyway I, I go home, and now I face my grandfather.
GINNI THOMAS: As Clarence tells me about going to his grandfather to tell him
he was quitting the seminary it probably was the hardest point
of his life, to tell that man that he was disappointing him.
And I'd like to say, "It was facing the music",
but it wasn't music.
It was a stony silence almost, and it was a coldness.
So he took me to the living room,
and he said that, as he had promised when we came to live
in '55, 1955, the door opened inward then,
now it was opening outward.
And I was to leave his house if I was,
since I had made decisions of a man, I should live like one.
And he said, I will never forget, "To-day, this day."
I think I was fumbling around, I said
"Well, are you still going to help me with college?"
He said "No. You're a man. You figure it out."
CLARENCE: Where could I go? What would I do?
First the seminary, then the country,
now the only real home I'd ever known.
All were crashing around me.
[♪]
My mother had an extra room in her apartment,
so I went over there.
MICHAEL: I think you've said it felt like you were reversing
your first walk to your grandfather's.
Yeah, I was going from 1955, I had come to
this wonderful place that was a sanctuary,
and now I was going back to live with my mother
in her apartment.
NEWSCASTER 1: Washington, Chicago, Boston, New York, these are
just a few of the cities in which the negro anguish
over Dr. King's murder expressed itself in violent destruction.
CLARENCE: Summer of '68 was when you had a lot of the riots,
I mean I thought everything was coming apart
NEWSCASTER 2: Some buildings were put to the torch while the looters
stripped block after block of stores along 7th Street.
CLARENCE: I was getting ready for work and I was listening to the radio
while I did that.
NEWSCASTER: Oh my God. Senator Kennedy has been shot.
CLARENCE: And they announced that he had been assassinated.
Well I mean, I dropped to my knees, I said "it's over."
Bad things were happening.
My grandfather had kicked me out.
I remember sitting there, "Kennedy, King, Kennedy."
"KKK" I remember writing it.
Oh my God, there it is!
'KKK'you know.
And it was, it was, that was probably the last straw.
I mean, I didn't need a last straw but that was it.
That was the nail in the coffin for me.
And for the first time in my life racism and race
explained everything.
It became, sort of, the substitute religion;
I shoved aside Catholicism and now it was this,
it was all about race.
[♪]
Every southern black had known such moments and felt the rage
that threatened to burn through the mask of meekness
and submission behind which we hid our true feelings.
I'm angry with my grandfather.
I'm angry with the church.
If it's a warm day, I'm angry.
If it's a cold day, I'm angry.
I'm sort of flying, lashing out at every single thing.
Nothing is right.
I'm staying in a room with a mynah bird,
with my mother, with her two big dogs.
But the one out, that I do have,
is that I was accepted to Holy Cross.
I've got one door is open, only one, and that was Holy Cross.
GINNI THOMAS: When he left the seminary and found his way to Holy Cross,
he was entering society that was in turmoil,
and he found his way to other blacks at Holy Cross
who were very radical and Marxist.
[♪]
We're supposed to be revolutionaries.
So you go to the local army navy store in Worcester,
and you get army fatigues, and boots.
Why that was the dress is beyond me,
but that's the way we dressed.
I wore carpenter's pants, and bib overalls.
STOKELY CARMICHAEL: We are going to shoot the cops who are shooting
our black brothers in the back in this country!
We were for anybody who was kind of, in your face.
It could be Stokely Carmichael, it could be H. Rap Brown.
H RAP BROWN: The brothers in here maintain that they will stay here until
the university is willing to talk on their terms.
It could be Angela Davis, it could be Huey Newton.
So the more radical tended to be the people we gravitated toward.
Art Martin decided to start a black student union, and he had
some ideas, but I could type. I said "I'll type it up."
I had my trusty Smith-Corona typewriter
with automatic return.
I said "What do you want in it?"
He said "anything you put in it."
So I typed it up and that became the Black Student Union.
MICHAEL: When did you first meet Kathy Ambush, and what was she like?
CLARENCE: I met her in my sophomore year.
Our politics overlapped, our politics tended to be
more radical, to the left.
We started dating, and would date throughout my time
at Holy Cross.
When I would go back home, the exchanges with my grand father
were really horrible.
Because I'd talk about the revolution, and I would
be drinking, and would, and wouldn't comb my hair,
and it was bad.
And he looked at me would say and he "I didn't raise
you to be like this."
"After all our sacrifices, this is what you've become."
I thought he was weak.
And he thought I was, I'd gone up north and become,
as he said, "one of those damn educated fools."
That I went up north and they put all that foolishness
in my head.
And my brother who came from the Vietnam War didn't like it.
CLARENCE: He told me that all of us should leave the country.
MICHAEL: All you radicals?
All of us should leave the country.
He had no use for any of us.
CLARENCE: But I went right back to my radical friends.
In the spring of 1970 I was one
of several Black Students Union members who went to Boston
to take part in an anti-war rally.
The organizers of the rally urged us to march to
Harvard square to protest the treatment
of America's domestic political prisoners.
Off we went chanting "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh."
And demanding freedom for Angela Davis,
Erica Huggins and anyone else we could think of.
On the way to Cambridge we stopped at this liquor store,
and this poor guy, he saw us, and he gave us the liquor.
I think he gave us some potato chips, or something, too.
But he said "just go."
And then on the way we consumed this liquid courage, you know?
Then we proceeded to be back and forth in Cambridge all night.
I mean there was teargas, sirens, it was bad.
[♪]
getting hurt, or anything else, or what was happening
to other people.
I got back to campus at 4 in the morning,
horrified by what I had just done.
I had let myself be swept up by an angry mob
for no good reason other than, that I too was angry.
I stopped in front of the chapel and prayed for the first time
in nearly 2 years.
I asked God, I said "If you take anger out of my heart,
I'll never hate again."
And that was the beginning of the slow return
to where I started.
[♪]
CLARENCE: You know what Yale was back in the 1970s.
Yale was, four generations of Groton and, and
Phillips Exeter, and "my father's grandfather was here."
And there were secret societies, and all that sort of stuff.
It was a different world, and it was a world that
I didn't quite understand.
When Jamal was born in February of my second year of law school.
It woke me up about the direction that we were
headed in in our country, and what the prospects
would be for him.
I watched busing on TV, and busing was a big deal,
remember because it was so violent in Boston.
NEWSCASTER: By federal court order a fleet of buses was hired to transport
black students to all white schools,
and whites to black neighborhoods.
Coming to South Boston, a traditionally conservative
and Irish enclave, blacks who made
the trip were met with cat calls, curses and worse.
[♪]
CLARENCE: I'd been to South Boston, and I was scared to death
to be over there,
and the schools were as bad as the schools in Roxbury
where the black kids were from.
So why were you sending a kid through all that trouble,
to go to school that's as bad, or worse?
That didn't make any sense to me.
Someone has a theory, and then they insert human beings
You know sort of like "have theory, add people."
You know, it's like, instant,
instant coffee or something.
"Have coffee."
"Add water."
But I knew one thing, nobody was going to have
some social experiment and throw my son in there.
[♪]
In law school, I would describe myself as a lazy libertarian.
And it was because I was looking at structures,
or restrictions on me.
Whether there were religious restrictions, or structures or
strictures on me.
My grandfather and his rules, society and its rules,
and I guess in a sense, I was saying
"all of you leave me alone."
In fact, my mantra, when I was in law school, is "leave me alone."
BOARD MEMBER 1: Mr. Roark, the commission is yours.
MICHAEL: Were you influenced by
Ayn Rand's libertarian philosophy?
CLARENCE: You know, Ayn Rand and Fountainhead started
and this would play out later in law school.
BOARD MEMBER 2: We want you to adapt your building like this.
BOARD MEMBER 1: And we must always compromise with the general taste
Mr. Roark, you understand that I'm sure.
HOWARD ROARK: No.
If you want my work you must take it as it is or not at all.
CLARENCE: And so, when you read these books, you say "Yeah, OK.
I'll become a day laborer rather than be told what to do."
BOARD MEMBER 3: Roark, this is sheer insanity can't you give in just once?
After all, you have to live.
BOARD MEMBER 3: How else? Don't you have to work?
HOWARD ROARK: I'd rather work as a day laborer if necessary.
CLARENCE: I would rather total failure in your world than to be told
what to do, or to be made to do something that I think is wrong.
Yale was the end of the line, and I made it through.
So, I really wanted my grandfather to be there to
witness the end, to witness that the kid that he took in in 1955,
crossed the finish line.
[♪]
My grandfather did not come.
He always had a reason.
And you know, I think in sort of, I think he was upset
with me, I could understand that.
And I certainly had not given him many good reasons to have
any deep, and warm or fuzzy feelings about me,
or my graduation.
So, nobody could come.
That was probably more difficult for me, and embittered me,
more than anything else.
I interviewed for jobs in D.C., Atlanta, New York, L.A.,
with anyone, anywhere who might hire me.
If you were black, and you were at Yale, the presumptions
were quite different than, if you were white.
So if you're white, and you graduated from Yale,
the presumption is what?
It is that you are really among the best.
On the other hand, if you're black and you're there,
you didn't really quite belong there.
So, we'll discount that a bit.
They can say 10 percent, 5 percent whatever.
But the reality was the discounted approach resulted in
certainly me not being able to get a job.
MICHAEL: But, eventually, the Missouri Attorney General,
Jack Danforth, offered you a job.
CLARENCE: It was the only job offer I got.
It was the quintessential Hobson's choice.
He went on to promise me "Clarence, I promise you more
work for less money, than anybody in the country."
The pay was ten thousand eight hundred.
The hardest part about taking the job was,
he was a Republican,
and the idea of working for a Republican
was repulsive, at best.
I was a registered Democrat.
I was left wing.
As nice as he was, he was still a Republican.
Putting that nicety aside, I wound up going.
Cases poured through there; in those days
the Attorney General's office handled all the appeals
from the local prosecutors across the state.
At the time, my thinking was that all blacks
were political prisoners.
That's, that's sort of the sophisticated level
at which I looked at the criminal justice system.
I worried about what I would do, when I got a case
involving black defendants, and then it happened.
This guy was sitting on a bench, or something,
and this black woman comes by.
He's black, she's black.
She's got her two, or three, year old kid in the car
In those days, most people didn't have air conditioning.
So, the windows are down.
He comes up to the car, at the stop light,
with an old style can opener, with a point, puts it to
the kid's neck, and forces his way in the car,
threatening the kid.
And then he takes her to a remote location,
rapes and sodomizes her, and he takes her to another location,
and rapes and sodomizes her again.
This case was far from unusual.
Blacks were responsible for almost 80% of violent crimes
committed against blacks, and killed over 90%
of black murder victims.
For most people that would be obvious, for me it was one of
these road to Damascus experiences.
Jack Danforth got elected to the Senate, and I had already
been there two and a half years, and I really wanted
to move more toward business.
I had better options now.
[♪]
It was a fine job but it was not enough work for me.
I had too much energy.
They spoon-fed the work and they parceled it out.
I was used to the work pouring in.
My Grandfather's Son, I noticed that Monsanto employed a number
of talented blacks who should have been moving up
the corporate ladder far more quickly.
MICHAEL: Did you go to speak to the affirmative action manager?
I confronted him about it and he pulls out this EEO report
with the numbers on it; it was one of these
computer print-outs, as though those are people.
You know he's not talking about who is getting training,
whose got mentors, what assignments they have,
who is getting promoted.
He's got this report that he shows to the labor department,
and that is these statistics.
MICHAEL: The affirmative action manager, he was African American?
Yes, yeah, mhm.
MICHAEL: He wasn't sympathetic?
He was doing his job and his reports said he was OK.
MICHAEL: He didn't care that these other black managers were stalled?
Well I don't know if he cared.
He was doing his job, and the reports were OK.
That's the most I got.
But I just thought that we're kidding ourselves.
We're looking at numbers and the numbers prove everything,
and human beings are having a lot of difficulties.
CLARENCE: I could feel the golden handcuffs
of a comfortable but unfulfilling life snapping
shut on my wrists.
I had to quit now or I never would.
And shortly after that I get a call from Senator Danforth
to see if I would be interested in working for him.
[♪]
RONALD REAGAN: More than anything else I want my candidacy
to unify our country, to renew the American spirit,
and sense of purpose.
CLARENCE: In the fall of 1980 I had decided
to vote for Ronald Reagan.
It was a giant step for a black man.
But I was distressed by the Democratic party's promises
to legislate the problems of blacks out of existence.
RONALD REAGAN: I pledge to you to restore the federal government the capacity
to do the people's work without dominating their lives.
CLARENCE: Reagan by contrast was promising
an end to the indiscriminate social engineering
of the 60's and 70's.
Reagan won in a landslide.
RONALD REAGAN: So help me God.
CHIEF JUSTICE: May I congratulate you, Sir.
CLARENCE: For the first time in my adult life
Washington was full of serious talk about
the possibility of getting government off the backs
of the poor.
THOMAS SOWELL: This is really an historic opportunity.
The economic and social advancement of blacks
in this country is still a great unfinished task.
CLARENCE: Tom Sowell invited me to this conference.
And it would be named the Fairmont Conference
because it was held at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.
It was how do we rethink the policies toward blacks
in this country in a new administration?
THOMAS SOWELL: Many social problems are worsening,
continued disintegration of families
CLARENCE: I sat at this table.
And there was a young black reporter there.
And I knew nothing about the press.
One question he asked me was "why was I so interested
in all these social issues?"
And I explained to him because of the destruction I saw
it doing at home in Savannah.
And as an example of that, I used my sister and her
kids being objects of these programs.
Little did I know, he would write an article about this,
and would turn it into an op-ed.
[♪]
GINNI THOMAS: The article by Juan Williams became a point
at which Clarence became a public persona.
[♪]
Then license is given to others, to attack you in whatever
way they want to.
You're not really black because you're not doing
what you expect black people to do.
You weren't supposed to oppose busing; you weren't supposed
to oppose welfare.
MICHAEL: Perhaps it marked a course for you, Justice Thomas.
CLARENCE: Oh, I don't know if it marked the course,
but there was no going back.
[♪]
The Reagan administration was running into the storm.
Everything the president did, he was called a racist.
That was from the very beginning.
I was under constant attack.
We have attempted in the last 2 years to remedy a wide range
NEWSCASTER: Congressman Barney Frank says he remains skeptical of progress
under the current administration.
RONALD REAGAN: I'm pleased that this is also an opportunity to acknowledge
CLARENCE: We have a positive record that we should never back down from.
That point is one that I cannot stress enough.
Any black misguided enough to accept a job
in the Reagan administration was automatically branded
an Uncle Tom.
After I wrote a letter to the editor of Playboy,
taking issue with a 1986 article by Hodding Carter,
called "Reagan and the Revival of Racism",
Carter responded as follows:
[♪]
Not a single civil rights leader objected to this
nakedly racist language.
MICHAEL: On the personal side, your marriage was strained
at this point?
It is one of those things and I just I didn't think
it was going to work.
I think many people go through that.
But what do you think was the reason in this case?
I, the, it just wasn't there, and I think that
you have to be honest with yourself, and not wait
until it deteriorates, or you do harm to somebody
who did you no harm.
MICHAEL: I can imagine how difficult it must have been,
for all three of you.
Yeah, it was-- You know, you live with it.
CLARENCE: Jamal came to live with me.
His mother thought it would be best
for me to have primary responsibility.
Being with him, was my happy place, being at home with him.
[♪]
MICHAEL: How did you first hear that your grandfather was dying?
Well I had been, I don't know why how we get
so busy in D.C.
I totally regret not going home more, I just regret it.
CLARENCE: I was with my brother, and um,
he told me my grandfather had died.
And that was like,
I think from then on I was in a bit of a fog.
It was really horrible.
When I got to the funeral, no sooner did the service begin
than I started to weep shamelessly and uncontrollably.
was think of the things I wish I had done differently.
Why had I spent so much time arguing with him?
I would never be able to tell him how right he'd been,
or how much I admired and loved him.
[♪]
Shortly after my grandfather's death
my grandmother had a stroke while lying in bed.
Within an hour or so, she was dead.
Certainly, it was like a trap door,
somebody opened the trap door, and you fell through it.
And there was no foundation.
And by the time I went back to Washington,
I had thought a lot more about things.
I would go outside and gaze at the Capitol Dome.
So, I'm asking myself why am I doing this?
There is nothing positive going on,
and I am getting the heck beat out of me.
I had to then flip it around a little bit.
For what will you die?
Is there something in life that you will die for?
What about your principles?
So, I decided that the principles
on which I was raised, my grandparents,
the principles of this country,
were worth dying for.
So what are these principles?
I was interested in, why this government?
Why this government?
Why not a parliamentary system?
Why not a dictatorship?
When Clarence was at EEOC, one of the best things,
looking back, that he did
was to hire two speech writers who worked with him
on reading founding documents,
and understanding American exceptionalism.
So, John Marini and Ken Masugi were anchors
for what came out to be his jurisprudence.
And we would literally spend hours discussing the founding.
And then they would give me reading materials,
and we would write articles, and we would go off to
American Political Science Association events,
and argue with positivists, and libertarians.
Oh, gosh.
It was, now that was a lot of fun,
in the sea of all this stuff.
Thomas Jefferson had written in 1776
"All men are created equal.
They are endowed by their creator
with certain unalienable rights."
That's natural law in a nutshell.
How then could a country founded on these principles
have permitted slavery and segregation to exist?
The answer was that it couldn't,
not without being untrue to its own ideals.
[♪]
I was looking for a way of thinking,
a set of ideals that fundamentally, at its core,
said slavery is wrong, at its core--
which natural law of course does.
[♪]
I was scheduled to go up to New York to a meeting,
and she happened to be there.
GINNI THOMAS: We met in 1986 at a conference
on how long does America need race preference policies
to get over slavery.
And his experiences were so resonant, and so powerful,
and so genuine.
I was struck by him.
CLARENCE: She was a gift from God that I had prayed for.
And, you know then I was iffy,
because I started questioning God's package.
You know, like what are you doing?
(Chuckles)
You pray for God to send you someone,
he sends you someone, and you say "Oh but she's white"
or "she's younger."
He's sent you someone.
What are you talking about?
So that was the end of that,
and she has been a fabulous gift from God.
[♪]
George H.W. Bush's transition team
asked if I would be interested in becoming a federal judge?
"That's a job for old people", I said.
I can't see myself spending the rest of my life as a judge."
They asked me to talk to Larry Silberman
who was a judge on the D.C. Circuit.
I said "Larry, I don't want a lifetime appointment."
He said "Clarence, it's not slavery.
You can leave if you don't like it."
[♪]
But once I got to the D.C. Circuit,
I really enjoyed it.
I enjoyed the work.
I liked the people.
Virginia worked across the street from me.
So we commuted in every day
and we really enjoyed our little house.
We really enjoyed our projects.
We enjoyed our anonymity, and our time together.
Here at home the search is on for a Supreme Court nominee
With the retirement of Justice Thurgood Marshall.
CLARENCE: All I know is that Justice Marshall retired,
and that was a shock.
So, I went to work on Sunday,
one of my law clerks was all up in arms,
and he says "Kennebunkport is on the line."
It was the president telling me to come up on Monday,
to have lunch to discuss this Supreme Court thing.
PRESIDENT BUSH: I am very pleased to announce
that I will nominate Judge Clarence Thomas
to serve as associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.
What do you say to critics who say the only reason you're being
picked is because you're black?
I think a lot worse things have been said.
I disagree with that, but I'll have to live with it.
PRESIDENT: Refer them to the President.
[Laughter]
How about that for an answer?
Well, I'll also say I didn't make the selection.
CLARENCE: I mean the attacks started immediately.
And the things they accuse you of--
they accuse of everything but murder, I guess.
NEWSCASTER 1: The Senate Majority Leader, George Mitchell told reporters
that the nomination shows that President Bush
is against quotas for every position
except the Supreme Court.
NEWSCASTER 2: Judge Thomas praises Louis Farrakhan,
the Black Muslim minister notorious for his pro-Hitler,
anti-Semitic rhetoric.
NEWSCASTER 3: Thomas' strict Catholic education terrifies
abortion rights groups afraid of more abortion restrictions.
MICHAEL: Did you meet with the board members of the NAACP?
They said they were going to be noncommittal,
and were not going to oppose me.
Well, shortly after that they opposed me.
His inconsistent views on civil rights policies,
which make him an unpredictable element
in an increasingly radical and conservative court.
And what I was told by friends,
who gave me a copy of the AFLCIO's letter to them,
requiring them to oppose me.
What I was told was that they needed cover
for the women's groups to oppose me.
So they needed the NAACP out front.
ACTIVIST: Write your senators and representatives,
tell them Clarence Thomas is unacceptable.
He has indicated that he believes in natural law
and he does not believe in privacy.
We don't need a lot of questions to be asked
before we Bork this guy, we simply immediately Bork him.
CALL ROOM: We want you to organize pickets of their offices,
follow them from the airport to their supermarket.
PATRICIA IRELAND: There is substantial opposition to Clarence Thomas.
His history of supporting a judicial philosophy
that is really out of step with the Bill of Rights
and the Constitution.
CLARENCE: We know exactly what's going on here,
and to pretend that it is for some other reason, stop.
Do I have like "stupid" written on the back of my shirt?
I mean, come on, we know what this is all about.
This isn't about what they say it's about,
so people should just tell the truth.
This is the wrong black guy.
He has to be destroyed.
Then now at least we are honest with each other.
[cameras clicking]
GINNI THOMAS: He knew he was going into the trial of his life
with the Senate run by the Democrats.
SENATOR BIDEN: The hearing will come to order.
GINNI THOMAS: We knew it was in the lion's den.
SENATOR BIDEN: Good morning, Judge.
Welcome to the blinding lights.
Finding out what you mean when you say
that you would apply the natural law philosophy
to the Constitution is, in my view,
the single most important task of this committee.
MICHAEL: Senator Biden was very focused natural law.
Who knows, I have no idea what he was talking about.
SENATOR BIDEN: I just want to make sure we all know
That you and I know, at least, what we are talking about here.
There is a fervent and aggressive school of thought
that wishes to see natural law further inform the Constitution
Argued against by the positivists, led by Judge Bork.
Now again, that may be lost on all the people,
you know and I know what we are talking about.
CLARENCE: I have to be perfectly honest with you.
You sit there, and you have no idea
what they are talking about.
All I know is that he was asking me these questions
Someone may apply it in a way, like Moore,
who leads him in a direction that is, quote, "liberal."
You may apply it in a way that leads you in a direction
that is conservative, or you may,
like many argue, not apply it at all.
But it is a fundamental question
that is going to be almost impossible
for non-lawyers to grasp in an exchange,
but you know and I know it is a big, big deal,
CLARENCE: One of the things you do in hearings
is you have to sit there and look attentively at people
you know have no idea what they're talking about.
And it was fine.
I understood what he was trying to do.
I didn't really appreciate it.
Natural law was nothing more than a way of tricking me
into talking about abortion,
since many Catholic moral philosophers
saw the two things as intimately related.
But my interest in natural law was different.
SENATOR BIDEN: Those who subscribe to this moral-code view
of natural law call into question
a wide range of personal and family rights,
from reproductive freedom
to each individual's choice over procreation.
[♪]
NEWSCASTER: On day two, Judiciary committee Democrats tried again,
but again couldn't convince Clarence Thomas
of their need to know how he would rule
on a woman's right to an abortion.
REPORTER: How are you? Are you holding up okay?
NEWSCASTER: Clarence Thomas signaled he is holding up just fine
as he went before the Senate Judiciary committee
for a third day.
Abortion, once again, topped the agenda.
CLARENCE: Most of my opponents on the judiciary committee
cared about only one thing.
How would I rule on abortion rights?
You really didn't matter,
and your life didn't matter.
What mattered was what they wanted,
and what they wanted was this particular issue.
SENATOR LEAHY: Have you ever had discussion of Roe v. Wade,
other than in this room?
JUDGE THOMAS: Only, I guess, Senator, in the fact
that in the most general sense.
If you are asking me whether or not
I have ever debated the contents of it,
the answer to that is no, Senator.
SENATOR LEAHY: Well, with all due respect, Judge,
I have some difficulty with your answer.
You ask us to believe that an intelligent and outspoken person
like yourself has never discussed Roe v. Wade
with another human being?
MICHAEL: They refused to believe you had not discussed Roe v. Wade.
Well you know what?
They should--
They refuse to believe a lot of things.
It's really-- Isn't that fascinating?
I had to, I had to have discussed it
because they wanted me to had to have discussed it.
It goes back to thing about affirmative action.
You have to believe in affirmative action,
because we think you ought to believe in affirmative action.
Well how is that different from slavery?
How is that different from segregation?
How is that different from being told
"you can't walk across that park"?
"Oh, you can't think those thoughts."
How is that any different?
I'd prefer to be excluded from the park
because I can live my life quite freely
without having set foot in a park.
But you can't live it freely
without having your own thoughts.
I felt as though in my life,
I had been looking at the wrong people,
as the people who would be problematic toward me.
We were told that "Oh it's going to be the bigot
in the pickup truck.
It's going be the Klansman.
It's going to be the rural sheriff."
And I'm not saying that there weren't
some of those who were bad,
but it turned out, that through all of that,
ultimately the biggest impediment,
was the modern day liberal.
That they were the ones who would discount all those things,
because they have one issue,
or because they can they have the authority,
the power to caricature you.
Thank you all, and thank you and your family
We will recess for five minutes.
[♪]
CLARENCE: We were just exhausted.
So, we went over just briefly, and it was out of season
to Cape May,
just to get away from the Washington area.
[♪]
We had just gotten back,
and that's when all heck broke loose.
GINNI THOMAS: A call came from the White House
that we were going to be visited by the FBI.
MICHAEL: What was that like when the FBI came?
As soon as they stepped in, they said
"do you know Anita Hill?"
And then they said "Did you ever try to go out with her
or did you ever discuss pornographic stuff with her?"
"No, no way."
And that was, I said "you got to be kidding me."
And then it's just like, you're deflated.
You said "This is where we're going now."
And, so I maybe, I felt more like Joseph K in The Trial,
that suddenly you're minding your business,
and you were arrested one morning.
You're entering an unknown world.
Well, this obviously isn't anything of any importance.
Quite honestly, I can't remember a single offense
that could be charged against me.
It's obviously a mistake, something very trivial.
CLARENCE: I have no idea what I was supposed to have done.
I'm sorry to disappoint you but I am afraid
that you wont find any subversive literature
or pornography.
Don't touch those record albums!
AGENT 1: What is this thing?
-My phonograph. -AGENT 2: Well, what's this?
CLARENCE: The FBI called back that afternoon,
they said that "This is uncorroborated.
There are no facts,"
that "We don't think there's anything to it."
NINA TOTENBERG: In an affidavit filed with Senate Judiciary committee
law professor Anita Hill
said Thomas began asking her out socially
and refused to accept her explanation
that she did not think it appropriate
to go out with her boss.
The relationship, she said, became even more strained
when Thomas, in work situations, began to discuss sex.
It was leaked.
This was a, this was a crime.
This was a criminal act that did this.
But in any case, it was leaked, and that changed everything.
REPORTER: Judge, do you think you are being treated unfairly, sir?
MICHAEL: After the leak the media just camped out at your house?
CLARENCE: Yeah, they stayed, and then whenever we left,
there would be a chase car,
and there was a motorcycle behind us.
So, you're literally under siege.
NEWSCASTER: The opponents of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas
want to delay a vote on this confirmation
because of charges of sexual harassment.
In light of these revelations which we consider to be
very, very serious,
then at the minimum we need to see a delay,
a delay of this nomination.
PROTESTERS: Hey! Hey!
Ho! Ho!
Anita Hill yes!
Thomas no!
NEWSCASTER: Several interest groups
including the Women's Legal Defense Fund
and the National Organization for Women
are also calling for a delay.
CLARENCE: You worry about, what can they convince people
that I have done.
You got all these PR firms, and slick law firms,
I'm just sitting there, I mean it's my wife and me.
We're like at home,
and we have a couple of prayer partners who would come over.
GINNI THOMAS: And they helped us in our home,
read through the Bible, and put on the armor of God
because it felt like the demons were loose.
NEWSCASTER: The eroding support for Thomas finally forced
Republicans to admit a Tuesday vote would be a bad idea
and there was unanimous consent to wait until next Tuesday
to allow a full hearing on the allegations in the meantime.
But Thomas's key backer
delivered an impassioned prediction
of what a public hearing would turn into.
SENATOR DANFORTH: Oh, it's going to be a field day.
Read all about it!
Tune in tomorrow,
and every day for the next seven days
to get everything and anything
that anybody wants to say about Clarence Thomas!
[mantle being struck]
SENATOR BIDEN: The hearing will come to order.
Mr. Chairman, Senator Thurmond, members of the committee,
I welcome the opportunity to clear my name today.
The first I learned of the allegations
by Prof. Anita Hill was on September 25, 1991,
when the FBI came to my home to investigate her allegations.
I was shocked, surprised, hurt, and enormously saddened.
I have not been the same since that day.
Let me describe my relationship with Anita Hill.
In 1981, after I went to the Department of Education
as an Assistant Secretary in the Office of Civil Rights,
I hired Anita Hill.
Anita Hill was an attorney advisor
who worked directly with me.
Anita Hill joined me at EEOC.
At EEOC, our relationship was more distant.
And our contacts less frequent.
Although I did not see Anita Hill often after she left EEOC,
I did see her on 1 or 2 subsequent visits
to Tulsa, Oklahoma and on one visit,
I believe she drove me to the airport.
I find it particularly troubling that she never raised any hint
that she was uncomfortable with me.
She did not raise or mention it
when considering moving with me to EEOC
from the Department of Education
and she never raised it with me when she left EEOC
and was moving on in her life.
But, I have not said or done the things
that Anita Hill has alleged.
God has gotten me through the days since September 25th
and he is my judge.
GINNI THOMAS: I have to tell you from my perch behind him.
I was just watching the senators and feeling rage towards them.
And I especially focused on Senator Kennedy,
and the things that I knew he had done in his life,
and the nerve of any of this to come out
to a man like I know and I love.
JUDGE Thomas: Mr. Chairman, I have never, in all my life, felt such hurt,
such pain, such agony.
My family and I have been done a grave
and irreparable injustice.
SENATOR BIDEN: Thank you, Judge.
The hearing is in recess for 5 minutes.
MICHAEL: So, then you left, and went back home.
Yeah.
MICHAEL: And Anita Hill testified.
Did you watch that?
CLARENCE: Oh, God, no.
SENATOR BIDEN: Professor, do you swear to tell the whole truth
and nothing but the truth, so help you, God?
PROFESSOR HILL: I do.
SENATOR BIDEN: Thank you.
My name is Anita F. Hill, and I am a professor of law
at the University of Oklahoma.
At the Department of Education
Judge Thomas asked me to go out socially with him.
I declined the invitation to go out socially with him.
My working relationship became even more strained
when Judge Thomas began to use work situations to discuss sex.
His conversations were very vivid.
When Senate staff asked me about these matters,
I felt that I had a duty to report.
I could not keep silent.
GINNI THOMAS: This was a kill-shot.
We could feel it.
So, they were coming to destroy my husband,
not just discredit him or differ with his point of view.
This was the kill-shot.
Can you tell me what incidences occurred,
of the ones you have described to us, occurred in his office?
Well, I recall specifically that the incident about the Coke can
occurred in his office at the EEOC.
SENATOR BIDEN: And what was that incident again?
The incident with regard to the Coke can,
PROFESSOR HILL: The incident involved his going to his desk,
getting up from a worktable, going to his desk,
looking at this can and saying, "Who put pubic hair on my Coke?"
GINNI THOMAS: I was the one that tried to watch what was going on
for as long as I could and it looked bad.
It looked like it could be credible.
She was painting a compelling picture
and yet coming up with different iterations
from what we had been told her allegations were.
So it was growing.
Someone had worked with her, or she had found new aspects
of her story that she was putting out there.
SENATOR BIDEN: Are there any other incidents that occurred in his office,
with just-in his office, period?
There is... I recall at least one instance
in his office at the EEOC
where he discussed some pornographic material,
or he brought up the substance or the content
of pornographic material.
SENATOR BIDEN: Again, it is difficult, but for the record,
what substance did he bring up in this instance, at EEOC,
in his office?
PROFESSOR HILL: This was a reference to an individual
who had a very large penis
and he used the name that he had referred to
in the pornographic material...
SENATOR BIDEN: Do you recall what it was?
Yes, I do.
The name that was referred to was Long Dong Silver.
GINNI THOMAS: Honestly it was a nightmare to hear about any of her charges
whether it was the pubic hair on the Coke can
or Long Dong Silver.
It was all jarring.
It was all so wrong, it was so shocking.
And I'm sure America was tuning in to C-SPAN.
And it was horrendous because it was so untrue.
CLARENCE: Then she told me what they were saying,
I know that didn't happen", because I'd never known.
So yeah, I was tormenting myself,
trying to dig through my endless memories.
Did I do something?
Did I say something?
Was it a joke?
And when they said whatever it was, they said--
I said "that didn't happen."
So, it was the first relief I felt.
SENATOR SIMPSON: Why in God's name,
when he left his position of power or status
or authority over you, and you left it in 1983,
why in God's name would you ever speak to a man like that
the rest of your life?
That is a very good question,
and I am sure that I cannot answer that
to your satisfaction.
I have suggested that I was afraid of retaliation,
I was afraid of damage to my professional life.
It just seems so incredible to me
that you would not only have visited with him twice
after that period and after he was no longer able
to manipulate you or to destroy you,
that you then not only visited with him
but took him to the airport,
and then 11 times contacted him.
That part of it is the most contradictory
and puzzling thing for me.
SENATOR BIDEN: Adjourned until 9 o'clock.
CLARENCE: Senator Danforth called me at home, after that testimony
and they wanted me to testify that night,
to not let the testimony, her testimony be the new-
fill up the news cycle.
NEWSCASTER: This afternoon Mr. Bush left for Camp David,
but you would have to describe the mood here as resigned,
I think, and somber, not at all sure
that Clarence Thomas is going to survive this.
CLARENCE: So, I reluctantly agreed to come back at 8 o'clock.
GINNI THOMAS: He may have thought it was necessary to go back
in front of the Senate,
but honestly from his wife's point of view
watching the man who is my loved, beloved husband,
I didn't know he had it within him to keep going.
So, I get to Jack, Senator Danforth's office
and we sit, and we begin to discuss that,
you know what's ahead.
So, I was exhausted,
and I asked him to get rid of all the people.
He turned off the lights
and I just laid down on the couch,
and just closed my eyes.
Surrounded by the darkness of early evening
drifting in the liminal space between sleep and waking.
I must have been thinking of "To Kill a Mockingbird"
in which Atticus Finch, a small-town southern lawyer,
defends Tom Robinson
a black man on trial for the rape of a white woman.
Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?
CLARENCE: I had lived my whole life knowing that Tom's fate
might be mine.
Strip away the fancy talk
and you were left with the same old story.
You can't trust black men around women.
JURY: We find the defendant guilty as charged.
CLARENCE: This one may be a big city judge with a law degree from Yale
but when you get right down to it,
he's just like the rest of them.
One of the things that came to mind
after I'd rested a little bit,
I said "Jack, this is a high-tech lynching"
and he said "If that's what you think, say it."
And so, I wrote that on a legal pad,
and he just exhorted me to go in the name of the Holy Ghost.
[crowd applauding]
GINNI THOMAS: There were conservative groups who were marshalling activists
from around the country to come in
and line the hallways.
[crowd shouting and cheering]
And when we came out of Senator Danforth's office,
and we were going down the hallway,
and all these people were clapping, and very excited.
[crowd cheering]
And he said to me "who are those people?"
And I said "I think they're angels."
[mantle struck]
SENATOR BIDEN: The committee will please come to order.
JUDGE THOMAS: Senator, I would like to start by saying unequivocally,
uncategorically that I deny each and every single allegation
against me today
that suggested in any way
that I had conversations of a sexual nature
or about pornographic material with Anita Hill.
That I ever attempted to date her.
That I ever had any personal sexual interest in her,
or that I in any way ever harassed her.
This is a circus.
It is a national disgrace.
And from my standpoint, as a black American,
as far as I am concerned, it is a high-tech lynching
for uppity-blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves,
to do for themselves, to have different ideas,
and it is a message that,
unless you kowtow to an old order,
this is what will happen to you.
You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured
by a committee of the U.S. Senate,
rather than hung from a tree.
GINNI THOMAS: When Clarence gave the high-tech lynching speech,
I knew how little of my husband was sitting in front of me.
And I knew that God was with him
because I knew he wasn't doing that on his own,
because I knew how weak he was at that point.
And, Judge, what is your response
to those specific charges again?
Senator, my response is that I categorically,
unequivocally deny them.
SENATOR PATRICK: Thank you.
They did not occur.
Senator, I wasn't harmed by the Klan,
I wasn't harmed by the Knights of Camelia,
I wasn't harmed by the Aryan race,
I wasn't harmed by a racist group,
I was harmed by this process,
this process which accommodated these attacks on me.
I would have preferred an assassin's bullet
to this kind of living hell
that they have put me and my family through.
SENATOR GRASSLEY: You haven't mentioned your grandfather.
I would like to have you tell me what you think advice,
he would give to you if he were advising you today.
JUDGE THOMAS: When I was getting hammered in the public
and getting criticized, and I complained to him,
he told me to stand up for what I believe in.
That is what he would tell me today.
Not to quit, not to turn tail,
not to cry "uncle,"
and not to give up until I am dead.
He had another statement.
"Give out but don't give up."
That is what he would say to me.
SENATOR HATCH: I would like you to describe now,
for this gathering,
what it is like to be accused of sexual harassment.
And let me add the word, unjustly accused
of sexual harassment.
The day I received a phone call on Saturday night,
last Saturday night, about 7:30
and told that this was going to be in the press, I had-I died.
The person you knew, whether you voted for me
or against me...
died.
In my view, that is an injustice.
SENATOR HATCH: Judge, you are here though.
Some people have been spreading the rumor
that perhaps you are going to withdraw.
What's Clarence Thomas going to do?
JUDGE THOMAS: I would rather die than withdraw.
If they are going to kill me, they're going to kill me.
So, you would still like to serve on the Supreme Court?
I would rather die than withdraw from the process.
Not for the purpose of serving on the Supreme Court
but for the purpose of not being driven out of this process.
I will not be scared.
I don't like bullies.
I have never run from bullies.
I never cry uncle and I am not going to cry uncle today
whether I want to be on the Supreme Court or not.
We are recessed for 15 minutes.
CROWD: We support Thomas!
CLARENCE: The poll numbers had changed dramatically,
after I testified.
NEWSCASTER: More than twice as many respondents
to a CBS News/New York Times poll say
they would likely believe Judge Thomas
if they were forced to choose.
It's like two thirds of the country was normally on my side.
The question is on the confirmation of the nomination
of Clarence Thomas of Georgia to be an Associate Justice
of the United States Supreme Court.
SPEAKER: Mr. Deconcini.
DECONCINI: Aye.
SPEAKER: Mr. Kerry of Massachusetts.
KERRY: No.
SPEAKER: Mr. McCain
McCAIN: Aye.
MICHAEL: Where were you during the actual Senate vote?
CLARENCE: During the vote, I was in the tub, and finally,
So I got in the bath, and just sort of soaked.
QUAYLE: On this vote the yeas are 52 and the nays are 48.
The nomination of Clarence Thomas of Georgia
to be associate justice of the United States Supreme Court
is hereby confirmed.
GINNI THOMAS: So, when the vote happened,
someone who worked with me called and told me that he won.
And I went and told Clarence, and he was in a bath-tub.
And you know, my reaction is,
still pretty much the way it is now "whoop-dee-damn-doo."
And I wasn't really all that interested in it.
I just think what they did was wrong.
So that you get confirmed, but the bottom line
doesn't change the fact that what you did was wrong.
Repeat after me:
I, Clarence Thomas...
Do solemnly swear...
JUSTICE WHITE: That I will support and defend...
The Constitution of the United States.
Without warning memories of home, my grandparents
and the accumulated toil
of the last 4 decades swirled through my mind.
[♪]
those same groups that opposed you during confirmation,
continued their attack.
Yeah.
Nothing they do surprises me anymore.
It's just, it's unpleasant, but that's life.
[♪]
The idea was to get rid of me,
and then it was after I was there, it was to undermine me,
my credibility, my effectiveness.
You want another bran muffin?
I could use some more coffee, Clarence.
Sure thing!
of Springfield police department vs. Hector Rodriguez Gonzalez.
Justice Thomas?
Uhh, well how were the rest of you guys going to vote?
I'm voting for the police department.
I say whatever the rest of you guys say.
Justice Thomas...
CLARENCE: Well, it's stereotypes draped in sanctimony
and self-congratulation.
It's a different sets of rules for different people.
If you criticize a-- a black person who's more liberal,
you are racist.
Whereas if you can do whatever to me,
or to now, Ben Carson,
ah, and that's fine because you're not really black,
because you're not doing what we expect black people to do.
[♪]
It's a tactic and when people see it being successful,
they don't realize they're going to be the next ones
in the Tower of London.
It is just a matter of time.
You allow this to be a precedent in your society,
and you, people might say, "Oh, it's wonderful.
This particular guy is getting tarred and feathered."
Well, there's a lot of tar, and there's a lot of feather,
and eventually you will be there.
NEWSCASTER: A watershed moment at the Supreme Court-
Justice Clarence Thomas asked a question
this is the first time Thomas has asked a question
in ten years.
He has said he relies on written briefs.
The case involves the Federal Law...
[♪]
MICHAEL: Some people say you don't ask enough questions
during oral argument.
We are judges, not advocates
and I think we should act accordingly.
Yeah, we might have opinions,
but it's not my job to argue with lawyers;
it's their job to make their cases,
and there's an advocate on each side.
The referee in the game should not be a participant
in the game.
The way things are changed is when the opinion,
the senior member in the majority
assigns who writes the opinion,
when that opinion is, is in draft form, it circulates.
And that's where the negotiations
and the real work takes place.
[♪]
One of the joys I get is, I get four new clerks every year.
I hire four new clerks every year.
Everybody who's chosen here, was chosen for a reason,
I'm very careful.
Everybody here is just, just what a great group.
GINNI THOMAS: When Clarence started picking non-Ivy League clerks,
some people would call them "third tier trash"
and those clerks who were clerking for Clarence,
took it as a badge of honor.
CLARENCE: So why did you go to USC?
[laughing]
MADELINE LANSKY: Your favorite question.
CHRISTOPHER MILLS: For law school I applied sort of all over the place
and just went to the,
went to the best place I could get in.
CLARENCE: And that was Harvard?
CHRISTOPHER MILLS: I guess.
That's what people told me.
Couldn't have done any better, huh?
[laughter]
We had some suggestions for you, but you didn't call us.
[laughing]
PROTESTORS: What do we want?
Affirmative action!
When do we want it?
Now!
What do we want?
Affirmative action!
When do we want it?
NEWSCASTER: What is expected to be a landmark case
before the Supreme Court to be argued this April.
NEWSCASTER #2: The plaintiffs in this case are three white applicants
to the University of Michigan who were rejected,
they say, because of their race.
[♪]
CLARENCE: "Racial discrimination is not a permissible solution...
that can only weaken the principle of equality
embodied in the Declaration of Independence
and the Equal Protection Clause."
Show me in the Constitution where you get a right
to separate citizens based on race.
I think what we've become comfortable with is
thinking that there is some good discrimination
and some bad discrimination.
And if you look in the briefs in the race cases, uh,
the segregationists, the people who thought
you should have a separate system, they,
they said that they thought it was good for both races.
So they thought it was good discrimination.
[♪]
You have to really be careful not to supplant
what is there, what was, uh, rightfully done,
simply because you don't think it's a great rule.
A bad policy can be constitutional.
A good policy can be unconstitutional.
So that's why we start with the text.
GINNI THOMAS: Justice Scalia called Clarence a "blood thirsty originalist."
He took that as a compliment.
CLARENCE: The framers understood natural law,
and natural rights a certain way,
and it is underpinning of our Declaration,
which then becomes the foundation for the Constitution.
They start with the rights of the individual.
And where do those rights come from?
They come from God, they're transcendent.
And you give up some of those rights
in order to be governed.
They're inalienable rights.
And now you give up only so many as necessary
to be governed by your consent.
And hence limited government, enumerated powers,
separation of powers, federalism, judicial review.
It all makes sense.
[♪]
GINNI THOMAS: One of Clarence's biggest loves is when he can get away
from Washington DC and be on the road in his motor home.
[♪]
CLARENCE: You know, I don't have any problem with going to Europe,
but I prefer the United States.
And I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States.
I prefer going across the rural areas.
I prefer the RV parks, and I prefer the Walmart parking
lots to the beaches and things like that.
There's something, normal to me about it.
I come from regular stock, and I prefer that.
I prefer being around that.
GINNI THOMAS: I think he has a natural capacity to hear more
than most of us do from regular people.
Clarence's grandfather is the perfect example
of an anchor in his life
that was not seen by the elites as having value
because he had such poor education.
He was illiterate.
But for Clarence, the wisdom from that man
and the experience, and the way he lived his life,
did make him the greatest man in his life.
GINNI THOMAS: I think he hopes that when he gets to heaven,
that his grandfather would say, "Well done."
CLARENCE: I keep a bust of my grandfather that my wife had made,
over me and I've done since I've been at the court.
He was uncorrupted by modern thinking.
When you can't read and write, you take in life as it is.
You did things a certain way.
You planted corn a certain way, you fed the hogs a certain way,
you pulled the fence line a certain way,
you plowed the field a certain way,
and it always had to be the right way.
I want to be able to say to him I lived up to my oath
and did my best.
[♪]
To do it the way you did the field, properly,
to do the law the right way,
to conduct yourself the right way.
I want to be able to say that it's a job well done.
[♪]
And to be a part of this, this country,
and this Constitution,
there is a sense of fulfillment that you get to write,
and to defend the very thing that protects our liberties.
[vocalizing]
[♪]