July 1, 1991 President George H. W. Bush appoints Clarence Thomas to U.S.Supreme Court; previously served on U.S. Court of Appeals and as Chairman of U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Clarence Thomas epitomizes one of the things liberals hate and fear most -- a black who has escaped the liberal plantation (Mr. Thomas's own words). Democrats really cannot understand how a black person can be both a Republican and a conservative, how a black person can reject their "help," stand up on two feet and look them in the eye and say he can make it on his own. Those blacks are shunned and vilified. Democrats don't believe minorities can make it without their help. And coincidentally, the more people who need the Democrats' help, the more powerful the Democrats become. As you may remember during his confirmation hearings, MSM pundits called Clarence Thomas “a colored lawn jockey for conservative white interests,” “race traitor,” “black snake,” “chicken-and-biscuit-eating Uncle Tom,” “house Negro” and “handkerchief head,” “Benedict Arnold” and “Judas Iscariot.” Liberal black columnist Carl Rowan compared Mr. Thomas to David Duke, saying " If you gave Clarence Thomas a little flour on his face, you'd think you had David Duke talking. " Rowan is typical of the vicious bigots on the left. Democrats have not changed at all from the days when they kept blacks in chains of iron, except now they try to keep them in chains of ideology, and those who try to break away are instantly excommunicated from the black race, accused of being a `white-thinking black,' an `Oreo cookie' or, at the very least, a foot-shuffling Uncle Tom. Black bloviator Julianne Malveaux said she hoped Clarence Thomas' wife feeds him lots of bacon and butter so he'd die early of a heart attack. Hmmm, that brings back memories of Condoleezza Rice's confirmation hearings. Do you see the pattern?
In 1991, upon the retirement of Thurgood Marshall, President George H. W. Bush nominated Thomas to replace him. This was widely considered a move in the conservative direction for the court. Marshall was the only black justice on the court, so the selection of Thomas as his successor preserved the existing racial mix of the court. Leftist organizations including the NAACP, the Urban League, and the National Organization for Women opposed his appointment to the Supreme Court because of his criticism of affirmative action and suspected anti-abortion position. Thomas asserted that he had not developed a stance on the Roe v. Wad decision, which prevented states from banning abortions. The U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary questioned Thomas about his political opinions and constitutional interpretation over several days. Toward the expected end of the confirmation hearings, Democratic staffers for the committee leaked to the media the contents of an FBI report which reported that a former colleague of Thomas, University of Oklahoma law school professor Anita Hill, had accused him of sexually harassing her when the two had worked together at the US Department of Education and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Hill was summoned to testify before the committee, and the hearings were broadcast on national television. When questioned about the allegations, Thomas emotionally called the hearings "a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks". Hill's detractors alleged that her claims were implausible. Hill had not lodged a complaint in the ten years after the alleged harassment. Also she sought to continue working for Thomas when he moved to the EEOC from the Department of Education, despite the alleged history of harassment. Hill's advocates argued that Hill was merely trying to further her career and that, despite the fact that she was a Yale Law graduate, she had no other options for employment. Almost all of Thomas's former female associates and employees supported him over Hill. Senator Joseph Lieberman said at the time, "I have contacted associates, women who worked with Judge Thomas during his time at the Department of Education and EEOC, and in the calls that I and my staff have made there has been universal support for Judge Thomas and a clear indication by all of the women we spoke to that there was never, certainly not, a case of sexual harassment, and not even a hint of impropriety." Many of those former female associates testified on Thomas's behalf. For example, Nancy Altman from the Department of Education testified: "I consider myself a feminist. I am pro-choice. I care deeply about women's issues. In addition to working with Clarence Thomas at the Department of Education, I shared an office with him for two years in this building. Our desks were a few feet apart. Because we worked in such close quarters, I could hear virtually every conversation for two years that Clarence Thomas had. Not once in those two years did I ever hear Clarence Thomas make a sexist or offensive comment, not once. . . . It is not credible that Clarence Thomas could have engaged in the kinds of behavior that Anita Hill alleges, without any of the women who he worked closest with -- dozens of us, we could spend days having women come up, his secretaries, his chief of staff, his other assistants, his colleagues -- without any of us having sensed, seen or heard something." Hill's detractors also pointed to many contradictions in her testimony. For example, she initially denied any knowledge of a news report that Senate staffers had told her that "her signed affidavit alleging sexual harassment by Clarence Thomas would be the instrument that would quietly and behind the scenes, would force him to withdraw his name." Senator Arlen Specter said that after consulting with her lawyers, Hill "flatly changed" her testimony "by identifying a Senate staffer, who she finally said told her that she was told that if she came forward, [Thomas] would withdraw . . . ." Senator Specter went on to say that "the testimony of Professor Hill in the morning was flat out perjury and that she specifically changed it in the afternoon when confronted with the possibility of being contradicted. Another issue arose with respect to Hill's treatment of the phone logs that Thomas's secretary had kept for him at the EEOC. Those logs showed that Hill had called Thomas about a dozen times since leaving the EEOC for a career as a law professor, including one time when Hill called Thomas's office to notify him that she was visiting D.C.; in that message, she had left her hotel room number and phone number with Thomas's secretary. Hill initially told the Washington Post that the phone logs were "garbage," and then implied in her opening statement to the Senate that the phone logs had mostly represented the times when Hill had called to speak to Diane Holt, Thomas's secretary. Under questioning, however, Hill admitted that "I do not deny the accuracy of these messages." Moreover, Diane Holt testified that if Hill had ever called to speak with Holt, that call would not have been recorded in Thomas's phone logs. Holt further testified that the phone log represented only the occasions when Thomas had been unavailable to take the call. In fact, Hill had additionally called Thomas on several other occasions that were not recorded in the logs because Thomas took the call. Hill also contradicted herself in attempting to explain the reasons for having called Thomas. At one point, she claimed that "the things that occurred after I left the EEOC occurred during a time when he was no longer a threat to me of any kind. He could not threaten my job. I already had tenure there." But later in the same session, Senator Simpson asked her, "if what you say this man said to you occurred, 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?" Hill responded, "That's a very good question. And I'm sure that I cannot answer that to your satisfaction. That is one of the things that I have tried to do today. I have suggested that I was afraid of retaliation. I was afraid of damage to my professional life." In the end, the Committee did not find sufficient evidence to corroborate Anita Hill's claim. Hill's supporters later insisted that relevant testimony from Angela Wright, a PR director for the EEOC and a witness to the alleged offensive conduct, was suppressed, even though the Democrats controlled the Senate. (Democrats were reluctant to call Angela Wright as a witness after Thomas testified that he had fired her for calling another employee a "faggot." Thomas was confirmed by the Senate with a 52-48 vote on October 15, 1991. He took his seat on October 23, 1991.
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