THOMAS, CLARENCE

born June 23, 1948, Pinpoint, near Savannah, Ga., U.S. Thomas, 1991 associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (from 1991). In succeeding to the seat of the ultraliberal Thurgood Marshall, he gave the court a decisive conservative cast. Thomas was abandoned by his father at the age of two and sent to live with his grandfather at age seven. Educated at an all-black Roman Catholic primary school run by white nuns and then at a boarding-school seminary, he spent his freshman year of college at Immaculate Conception Abbey and then transferred to Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass., where he obtained his bachelor's degree in 1971. In 1974, after receiving his law degree from Yale Law School, he was successively assistant attorney general in Missouri (197477), a lawyer with Monsanto Co. (197779), and a legislative assistant to Republican Senator John C. Danforth of Missouri (197981). In the Ronald Reagan and George Bush administrations he became an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Education (198182), chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (198290), and a justice on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (199091). During the confirmation hearings for his Supreme Court nomination, the Senate Judiciary Committee, along with the U.S. news media, pressed him for his views on such controversial issues as abortion, but he refused to state his position. Nevertheless, he seemed headed for easy confirmation until a former aide stepped forward to accuse him of sexual harassment. The aide, Anita Hill, a law professor at the University of Oklahoma, also happened to be black. In televised hearings Hill testified that Thomas had made sexually offensive comments to her in an apparent campaign of seduction. He denied the charges, and the Senate eventually voted 5248 to confirm his nomination. On the Supreme Court, Thomas maintained a relatively quiet presence but evidenced a strong conservatism in his votes and decisions, frequently siding with fellow conservative Antonin Scalia.