Clarence Thomas

American jurist and associate justice of the Supreme Court the center of a nomination controversy when a former employee, Anita Hill, came forward to relate a sexual harassment story to the Senate committee ruling on his appointment. Thomas was assistant attorney general of Missouri from 1974-1977, and was legislative assistant to Sen. John Danforth of Missouri from 1979-1981. He served as assistant secretary for civil rights in the U.S. Department of Education from 1981-1982 and chairman of the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1982-1990. He was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1989 and took the oath of office 3/12/1990. He was nominated by President George Bush in 1991 to fill the vacated position of Thurgood Marshall as an associate Justice on the Supreme Court. Born in the Pinpoint community near Savannah, Ga. to a teen-age mother in poverty, Thomas was raised first by his grandparents and then by Catholic schools. He worked his way through the Conception Seminary from 1967-1968, received his A.B. Cum Laude from Holy Cross College, and his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1974. He was admitted to the Missouri Bar in 1974, and was an attorney for the Monsanto Company from 1977-1979. His nomination proceeding for the prestigious post of associate justice became a major media event when a former employee, Anita Hill, came forward to discredit Thomas for incidents that occurred while she worked for him. The Congressional hearings on his nomination began on 9/10/1991, 10:00 AM EDT, Washington, DC. A former conservative federal appeals judge, he had an assistant named Anita Hill a decade formerly. When his hearings commenced, she accused him of sexual harassment, denied by him. He made a denial to FBI investigators on 9/28/1991, the day after the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to send his nomination to the Senate floor without recommendation, after their appraisal. On12/15/1991, he won confirmation to the Court, overcoming a bitter debate that divided the nation and strained the Senate, with a vote of 52-48, after 3 1/2 months of heated deliberations centered on the sex charges. Thomas’ nomination was successful, however, and he took the oath of office 10/23/1991. During his prior history, Thomas had earned a reputation as an outspoken black conservative who opposed minority preference programs. As recently as August 1998, Thomas, addressing 1,500 black jurists attending a National Bar Association annual meeting in Memphis, asserted his "right to think for myself." Thomas married the former Virginia Lamp, a good-looking white woman on 5/30/1987. They have one child, Jamal Adeen. In July 2001, a new book came out by David Brock, "Blinded by the Right" in which he claimed that he had deliberately lied in an attempt to discredit Anita Hill and whitewash the reputation of Thomas. Link to Wikipedia biography