Despite all the attention paid to the Monica Lewinsky stained blue dress, Professor Anita Hill showed up four years earlier with an unblemished character and a blue dress that made her a significant figure on the landscape of American jurisprudence.
In October of 1991 a law professor at the University of Oklahoma’s College of Law was embroiled in a controversy that rocked the course of history. Ms. Anita Hill accused, Judge Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment and impropriety. The significance, of course, was that Thomas had been nominated by President George H.W Bush as the second African American to sit as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States.
I was thirty-five years old, the father of two boys and leery of the world’s reaction to a new Black Justice. At 35 I was politically naïve and was just proud that another Black man was about to ascended to the highest court in the land. Although Mr. Thomas was the darling of the Republican Party and diametrically opposed to everything I believed, I thought it was important that he receive a fair hearing and be judged on his merits. I grew up in an America where African American men and women did not have the luxury of discernment. Had Jackie Robinson been ‘No Talent’ Robinson, few Black people would have said, “no” to his promotion to the all-white Major Leagues. A bad player may have set the cause back but opening the door was much more important.
When Anita Hill’s plane arrived in Washington DC in October of 1991 to testify about the personal indignities that she claimed at the hands and mind of Clarence Thomas, I was suspicious and resentful of her motives and mere presence. She was calm, poised and confident. She wore a sky blue dress that gave her an almost angelic quality. The brothers and I felt she must have been a plant, an obvious trick by the White man to bring a smart brother down. We dismissed her out of hand as a scorned woman paid off to get Clarence Thomas. I am now the grandfather of two young accomplished women, one a private business owner, the other preparing to go off to college this coming fall. They have lived through daily cat-calls, questioning of their competence, ability and sexual mores. If they speak out forcefully, they are shrill, if they assert themselves they are “bitchy.” All the things we deem as positives when we address men. Justice Thomas has aided in my re-assessment of Ms. Hill. He has shown himself to be narrow in his thinking, (opposing affirmative action and minority voter rights legislation) easily influenced (his few utterances from the bench parroted those of the late Justice Scalia) and as a result of his relative silence, I question his assertiveness, leadership and discernment. Although his wife Ginny Thomas, founded Liberty Central, a conservative organization dedicated to the defeat of the Affordable Care Act he lacked the ethics to disqualify himself from voting on the issue when it was presented to the Supreme Court for adjudication.
Professor Hill on the other hand was reluctant to testify initially but after some coaxing found it personally repugnant to not make public what she felt was information that compromised the judge’s qualifications. She shunned the limelight and made no overt effort to enrich herself. In the face of mounting pressure from the Senate committee charged with weighing her testimony, she was essentially abandoned by the Democrats, attacked by Republicans and was left alone armed with only a small legal team and the truth. She tried hard to live her life in dignity and obscurity but realized the role she played, that thrust her into history, was a pathway to more important work, helping to achieve equal treatment for women.
With the recent focus on appointments to the Supreme Court and on the symbolic eve of the 25th anniversary of her testimony, I’d like to publicly apologize to Professor Hill. You do not now, or have you ever needed validation. I firmly believe in your account of the events that made your name synonymous with equal treatment for women. My granddaughters thank you as well
