Narrowly Defined Image Belies Jurist's Quiet Clout

The sessions in Thomas's chambers often surprise those not anticipating such candor from a justice. Washington lawyer Tom Goldstein, whose firm devotes itself primarily to Supreme Court litigation, has met all the justices and has declared Thomas "the most real person" of them all.

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In July 1997, Goldstein stopped by to visit a friend who was clerking for the justice and ended up having a two-hour conservation with Thomas. They talked about education. And talked about the importance of raising children to have exemplary character. And talked about Thomas's judicial philosophy.

"The public image of him and the sense you come away with in a one-on-one conversation couldn't be more different," Goldstein said. "And this is from someone who is not a fan of his ideology or jurisprudence. But I am a fan of him personally."

A Schoolboy Unbroken

Thomas's presentation of his life often includes his high school yearbook, old family photos and, perhaps most significant, a faded yellow statuette of St. Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes. "That's what they called me," Thomas has said in public speeches, "a lost cause."

Thomas won the statuette nearly 40 years ago in a Latin bee at St. John Vianney Minor Seminary, the high school run by the Diocese of Savannah for young men considering the priesthood.

He loves to tell visitors his St. Jude story: Someone among his white fellow seminarians broke the head off his statuette in the open dormitory, leaving the head next to the body on his bureau. (That wasn't the only incident. Once, a fellow student shouted after the lights went out: "Smile, Clarence, so we can see you." The worst part, Thomas has said, is that no one told the guy to shut up.) The broken statuette he glued back together. And when they broke it again, he used thicker glue. They got the message -- he, Clarence Thomas, could not be broken.

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."

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.