A former clerk for another justice recalls Thomas thumbing through his St. John yearbook to point out that he was the only black student in his graduating class. The school and its students had treated him paternalistically, he grumbled. Thomas "was emoting," said the former clerk, who spoke only on the condition she not be identified. "He felt he had to explain himself."
Thomas went on to discuss his experience at Yale Law School, and how he felt rejected by the "pretty people," the bourgeois blacks. "I was left thinking he feels incredibly uncomfortable in his skin," the former clerk said. "It was almost like a person who didn't feel attractive, who didn't feel accepted."
Clarence Thomas, with first lady Barbara Bush, President George H.W. Bush, wife Ginni and Justice Byron White, is sworn in as a justice.
(AP)
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_____Style of a Justice_____
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Photo Gallery: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has a low profile by Washington standards, but is far more engaged than he lets on.
_____Record of a Justice_____
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Interactive Chart: An analysis of Thomas's record compared to other Supreme Court justices.
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A Justice's Private File
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Excerpts: Thomas's Legal Writings
_____More From The Post_____
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Jurist Embraces Image As a Hard-Line Holdout (The Washington Post, Oct 11, 2004)
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Jurist Mum Come Oral Arguments (The Washington Post, Oct 11, 2004)
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Culling the Reputable, Reliable, Right-Leaning (The Washington Post, Oct 11, 2004)
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In Sharp Divide on Judicial Partisanship, Thomas Is Exhibit A (The Washington Post, Oct 11, 2004)
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Thomas's Across-the-Aisle Aid Puzzles Even the Beneficiaries (The Washington Post, Oct 10, 2004)
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Yale Law Lacks Portrait -- And Thomas's Goodwill (The Washington Post, Oct 10, 2004)
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Thomas v. Blackmun (The Washington Post, Oct 10, 2004)
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About This Series
This series of articles about Justice Clarence Thomas is the result of more than two years of reporting by Washington Post staff writers Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher. The two reporters published a Post magazine article about Thomas in August 2002. Their book on Thomas is scheduled to be published next year by Doubleday.
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During a small reception at the court this year, it was clear how important leisure time is to his spirit. He gushed about the 65-inch TV he purchased with a portion of the reported $1.5 million advance he is receiving from HarperCollins for a memoir he is writing. But, Thomas noted to a guest, he hadn't signed up for TiVo because that's one way "Big Brother" can intrude on your life. At the time, college basketball was on his mind. He had just returned from visiting Texas Tech coach Bob Knight, a good friend. One reason they get along so well, he told this guest, is their shared distrust of the media.
Thomas is also wary of Congress and the executive branch, even though he spent nearly 11 years in those institutions. Thomas is no fan of the infighting and game-playing. This is the message Thomas wanted to communicate to Brian Jones when he summoned his protege to his chambers that day in 2000 and warned him about taking a civil rights job at Justice.
"You take that job, you end up fighting for your life every day," said Thomas, adding: "Do you want to wake up every day and fight the [interest] groups?"
Still, Thomas had catapulted to the Supreme Court with a résumé of notable "black jobs." So how could it be career suicide for Jones? "You don't have to do that," Thomas told Jones. "My generation had to do that."
As it turned out, Jones wasn't offered any job at Justice. He did, however, later accept the general counsel's post at the U.S. Department of Education, overseeing a staff of 85 attorneys. And that's exactly the kind of job Clarence Thomas wanted for him all along.
Research editor Margot Williams and researcher John Imbriglia contributed to this report.
