born June 23, 1948, Pinpoint, near Savannah, Ga., U.S.
U.S. jurist.
He graduated from Yale Law School and served as assistant attorney general in Missouri (197477), lawyer for Monsanto Co. (197779), legislative assistant to Sen. John Danforth (197981), assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Education (198182), and chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) (198290). Pres. George Bush appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1990 and then to the Supreme Court of the United States; he thereby became the second African American justice on the court, after Thurgood Marshall . His 1991 confirmation hearings attracted enormous public interest and media attention, largely because of accusations of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, a law professor and former colleague of Thomas at the EEOC. Thomas denied the charges, and the Senate narrowly voted to confirm him. A quiet presence on the court, he generally follows a predictable pattern in his opinions
conservative, restrained, and suspicious of the reach of the federal government into the realm of state and local politics.