Speaking Truth to Power

by Anita Hill

  Late that afternoon, back at the law school, I got a call from David Margolick of The New York Times. Through him I learned that President Bush had selected Clarence Thomas as his nominee to the Supreme Court. I was caught completely off guard. I had spent most of the day waiting in an examination room. All morning, whenever I thought about the nomination, I assumed that Garza would be picked. I was guarded in my comments to Margolick. Whether honestly or as part of a journalistic ploy, he seemed dissatisfied. He told me he was doing a “psychological profile” of the nominee, and I responded that I was not qualified to give such a psychological analysis of Thomas or anyone else.

  Margolick neither quoted me nor referred to our conversation in his article, which appeared a few days later. But his call made me wonder: if, on the very day of the nomination, a New York Times reporter knew that I had worked with Clarence Thomas, who else might know and what might that mean in terms of future inquiries? I did not mention Thomas’ conduct toward me to Margolick. In fact, I had not mentioned it to anyone in years, until later that evening, during a conversation with my friend Karolyne Murdock, whom I had come to know in 1988 when we were both serving as members of the board of directors of the Women’s Resource Center. This local organization offered counseling services for rape victims, sponsored group sessions for marital and family crises, and provided shelter for victims of battering and other forms of domestic violence. Karolyne, a bank vice-president with over twenty years in banking, and I, the commercial law teacher, had hit it off immediately. I was very impressed by the professional demeanor and the financial expertise that she brought to the board. Our friendship was based partly on our common concern for community issues—Karolyne followed her membership on the center board with a membership on the board of a local child advocacy group—and partly on our mutual love for movies. On July 1 it was the movies that brought us together.

  Karolyne and I drove from her office to the local theater to see Batman. At first we focused on our work weeks. Then we talked about my visit to the doctor. Despite the news from Margolick, my health concerns were by far the greater distraction. But on the way home, Karolyne asked my opinion of the Thomas nomination, unaware that I had worked with him. She wanted to know what I thought both as a member of the legal profession and as an African American. When I told her about my experience with Thomas, her response was immediate. “You have to disclose this information, don’t you?” Oddly enough, as I think about it, this was the first time someone had suggested that I should raise a complaint about the behavior. I wish my reaction had been so certain. “I’m not sure what I’ll do,” I said. She looked concerned but did not push.

  That evening, for the first time in several years, I spoke with Susan Hoerchner. Upon hearing about the nomination, she had instantly recalled our conversations about Thomas’ behavior. As far as she was concerned, Thomas was a complete scoundrel. She reacted as someone witnessing the pain of a friend. She had not forgotten. She did not suggest that I go to the Senate or anyone else with the information. She simply expressed her dismay that inexcusable behavior had seemingly been rewarded.

  For years I had spent considerable time and effort convincing myself that what happened to me no longer mattered. For the first time I was forced to consider that it did matter—that the behavior was not only an offense to me but unfitting for someone who would sit on the Supreme Court. I had paid little attention when Thomas was nominated to the D.C. Court of Appeals. He had been confirmed before I had any real idea what was occurring. In February 1990, when Thomas was before the Judiciary Committee for that nomination, I was preparing to go to Europe. Now it suddenly hit me that the behavior I knew about was no longer simply a personal concern, that the Supreme Court mattered to me as an attorney and as a citizen, and that I had a responsibility to provide the Judiciary Committee with relevant information. At the same time, it occurred to me that this nomination was a political move, despite George Bush’s declarations to the contrary. The depth of the political force behind the nomination would not be revealed until weeks later, but even then I knew politics was an inescapable factor. As the controversy over the nomination emerged, my course of action became even less clear.

  I am by nature a cautious person, and on July 1, 1991, I had not had a chance to weigh all the factors. Moreover, even if I decided to disclose my information, I was not sure whom to contact. At the time, I was convinced that my name would surface in a thorough Senate investigation. I relied on the process to find me instead of interjecting myself into the process. In retrospect, this may have been my way of deferring responsibility for making a decision. I reflected on my experience, and I waited to hear from the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Senate Judiciary Committee. The wait lasted from July to September.

  Much of the spring I had been preoccupied with trying to get the correct prognosis and treatment for the condition. In late summer, after seeing several doctors, I found a female gynecologist who had had the same condition. She discouraged me from simply taking pills to alleviate the pain and recommended exploratory surgery. She performed the surgery in July 1991 and confirmed the condition but could not determine the tumors’ size or location. The surgeon recommended their removal, with the possibility that a hysterectomy would become necessary. I was thirty-five years old, and for the first time, being without children and single weighed heavily upon me.

  Surgery was unavoidable and I knew it, but I also knew it might alter my life forever. I had never had a burning desire to have children. And I looked at JoAnn’s children with the sense that they were partly mine. But now that it seemed I might never have them, I had to stop and think seriously about whether I was willing to give up that capability.

  Meanwhile, I tripped through my house along trails from the kitchen to my bedroom, the only two rooms that had not been overtaken by a renovation project that had begun in mid-June. I wondered how the enclosure of a deck outside could absorb so much of the space inside. Each day the workers left me a new coat of plaster dust, a final reminder that they had control of my space. It seemed impossible to find a place to work at home, though I kept trying: there was no work space in the galley kitchen; my bedroom was too small for a desk; and my study was cluttered with dining room furniture.

  Though it was summer and classes were over, I had plenty of work to do. I had agreed to be the faculty representative in the office of the provost, a year-long assignment that involved splitting my time between the law school and the main campus. I was to teach as well as to work on special projects for the provost, including updating the faculty handbook. In addition, I was preparing for the American Bar Association annual meeting which was being held in Atlanta in August, and would feature events focusing on minority involvement. I had become active in the ABA Business Law Section, and in particular with the Uniform Commercial Code Committee. As chair of this committee’s membership subcommittee, I was organizing a reception for local attorneys who might consider joining us. Packing for my trip to the bar association meeting was a challenge. I had to find clothing that would accommodate my protruding stomach (the tumors had by now grown to the point that my waist was two sizes larger than my hips) and the heat and humidity of Atlanta in August.

  Atlanta was the perfect site to encourage greater participation by African Americans in the ABA. There also seemed to be more white women than usual. I saw more former classmates and old friends than I had ever seen at an ABA meeting before. Events were well attended, and presentations were well received. Everywhere, conversation turned to Clarence Thomas, the first black man to be nominated to the Supreme Court since 1967. And everyone at the meeting seemed to take particular care in assessing his abilities. In accordance with its standard practice of reviewing the qualifications of judicial nominees, the ABA was considering its rating of Thomas.

  After one session, I ran into a friend from law school, George Jones, who was one year ahead of me and one of the most thoughtful and analytical law students I knew. Jones believed that t
he Thomas nomination should not be challenged because he would serve the black community better than any of the potential white nominees. I found the nomination questionable because of Thomas’ lack of experience. I thought the black community would fare better challenging the nomination, even at the risk of a white replacement. The conversation left me disheartened. I knew that many in the black community would not want to “give up” Thurgood Marshall’s seat to a white justice, no matter what.

  At the same session, I also ran into Carlton Stewart, who had been at the EEOC with me before he was transferred to the commission’s Atlanta office. Carlton was ecstatic about Thomas’ nomination. He and Earl Grayson, who was with him, both gushed their support for Clarence Thomas and mentioned scornfully that a local NAACP group had been censored by the national office for supporting him. I allowed that the nomination was a great opportunity for Thomas. Stewart and Grayson were two friends elated by their buddy’s personal success. Merit did not seem to enter into their response. After my conversation with Jones, I realized that it was senseless to argue the nomination with such diehards, and I changed the subject when a law student approached us to talk about teaching as a career. Later, at the hearing in October, Stewart and Grayson would claim that I said the nomination was “wonderful” and spoke of it in “glowing terms.” I did not. Their own enthusiasm undoubtedly colored their recollection of the conversation.

  At that ABA meeting I revealed to only one person my doubts about Thomas’ ability to carry out the responsibilities of an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Over lunch in an Atlanta hotel, I confided in Cathy Thompson, a classmate from Yale Law School. Cathy and I shared similar backgrounds that separated us from others in our class at Yale. Both of us had attended state colleges not known for their sophistication, yet both of us had done well and made many friends among our more “urbane” classmates. Cathy grew up in North Carolina and had returned there to a successful legal practice. By the time we met in Atlanta, we were eleven years out of law school. As we had lunch at the swank Hotel Nikko, we both felt quite successful. She had served as president of her state bar association, and I was a tenured faculty member at the only state law school in Oklahoma. We were two small-town girls who had beat the odds.

  Cathy and I hadn’t seen each other since the American Bar Association meeting in 1989. We spent most of our lunch catching up. The nomination of Clarence Thomas came up, as it inevitably did that week. Cathy knew I had worked in Washington but not that I had worked for Thomas. Either by nature or by experience, Cathy is a matter-of-fact, pragmatic person. She listened calmly, though I could tell that she was shocked by what I told her. Mostly, I described how Thomas had pressured me for a social relationship, deliberately omitting the graphic details, to spare myself as much as her. Those details seemed inappropriate in any context, and certainly at an ABA lunch. I was near tears even disclosing what I did. Talking to Cathy, I felt that she could have been me, that my experience might well have been hers, and maybe even had been in one form or another.

  After lunch neither of us knew what to say. We left feeling a little less sophisticated, and a little less secure about the trappings of “success.” My career had been less about success than survival. Success was simple for me. It meant having work that I found meaningful, being intellectually challenged, and doing the work well. I had not set a goal of attaining a particular status within a certain time frame, as some of my peers had—partner in a major firm or full professor at a top twenty law school by age thirty. My goal for success was modest and unstructured. Yet at each turn I was hampered by obstacles that turned me away from success and drove me down the path of mere survival. I tried to remind myself that despite the obstacles, I had achieved more than my grandparents could have imagined.

  A few weeks after I returned from Atlanta, another member of the press contacted me. At the urging of a relative who worked at The Washington Post, I spoke with Sharon LaFraniere, a reporter who was doing a profile on Thomas. She seemed to be focusing on Thomas as a boss, but she also mentioned some rumors she had heard about his strict upbringing of his son. I declined to comment on the latter. About the former, I contributed that while Thomas could be a demanding supervisor, I thought his professional expectations of his employees were consistent with his responsibilities. This time, when asked what I thought of Thomas’ views on civil rights, I was more critical than I had been in my conversation with Margolick. LaFraniere’s story, which ran on September 9, 1991, read:

  Anita Hill, a former special assistant to Thomas at the Education Department and the EEOC, was particularly disturbed by Thomas’s repeated, public criticisms of his sister and her children for living on welfare. “It takes a lot of detachment to publicize a person’s experience in that way” and “a certain kind of self-centeredness not to recognize some of the programs that benefitted you. I think he doesn’t understand people, he doesn’t relate to people who don’t make it on their own.”

  At a conference for black Republicans in 1980, Thomas had said of his sister, “She gets mad when the mailman is late with her welfare check. That’s how dependent she is.” Political commentators had cited this remark as a key to Thomas’ rise in popularity with the conservatives of the Reagan administration. Ellen Wells, who has since changed party affiliations, attended the conference. She recalls that Thomas painted his sister as an odious, unworthy individual who had chosen slovenliness over industry and fraud over honest work. Moreover, according to Thomas, his sister had schooled her children to do the same. When I spoke to LaFraniere, I did not know that Emma Mae Martin had gone on welfare in order to care for an ailing aunt and was now self-supporting, working two jobs. Thomas’ characterization of her had just stuck with me for years. I had even mentioned to Thomas himself how unduly harsh I thought it. He shrugged off my reaction. Had I known the truth about his sister, I would have been even more critical of Thomas’ indifference to her situation in the early 1980s. But most detestable was Thomas’ willingness to malign his sister as a ward of the state to further his own political ambitions. That demonstrated a level of duplicity of which even I would not have believed him capable.

  Once again I chose not to go into the details of that experience with LaFraniere. Like Margolick, The Washington Post reporter seemed to me to be missing the point that the significance of the nomination was what it would add to the jurisprudence of the Court. While neither expressed any hostility toward Thomas, both seemed to be pursuing a line of questioning that relied primarily on personal opinion with little attention to Thomas’ record. I was certain that opinion would be mixed. It is hard to imagine anyone getting to the point of being nominated to the Supreme Court without a number of vocal supporters. But from my observation of him and his own early assertions about his lack of popularity, I knew that there were many who would be critical too.

  The debate over the merits of the Thomas nomination continued throughout the summer. The American Bar Association gave Thomas its lowest rating ever, reflecting a lukewarm if not chilly reception to the nomination in the legal profession. The Leadership Conference for Civil Rights, a coalition of 185 national organizations, opposed the nomination forcefully, stating two grounds: that Thomas “let his personal opinions interfere with his constitutional and statutory responsibilities to enforce civil rights laws” and “demonstrated a consistent hostility to many of the Supreme Court’s most fundamental civil rights decisions.”

  Though President Bush had declared that race was not a factor in his selection of Thomas, the White House chose to focus on Thomas’ personal background in pointing to his qualifications for the post. All but ignoring his judicial record, the White House spun a tale about his childhood poverty and his triumph over discrimination. One Thomas proponent remarked that his hard work and self-discipline sent a message that it is possible for blacks to succeed in American society. Much of the media coverage followed suit, tracing Thomas’ history to the small town of Pin Point, Georgia, where he had spent a portion of hi
s youth, through his education at Holy Cross and Yale and his nomination to the Court. Some of the coverage mentioned his comments about his sister, but few saw the irony in the contrast between the choices he had in life and those of his sister.

  After a fire destroyed his mother’s home, Thomas and his brother, Myers, were sent to live with their grandparents in Savannah. Martin, their sister, remained in Pin Point and lived with an aunt. Both Thomas and his brother graduated from private school. Martin graduated from public school. “I had the opportunity to go to college if I wanted to, but I made the choice,” she told an interviewer. “I took care of the older people.” While Thomas was in law school, Martin survived by working two minimum-wage jobs. Later, when her aunt suffered a stroke, Martin quit work to care for her. Her husband had abandoned the family in 1973, and she and her two children lived on a monthly public assistance check of $169. By 1991 Emma Mae Martin had returned to the workforce.