Justice Thomas's Life A Tangle of Poverty, Privilege and Race

When Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's nephew was caught selling crack, Thomas's sister, Emma Mae Martin, did not call on Thomas for legal advice or favors. Their relationship was strained enough. She "just left it alone," she said, adding: "He didn't want to get involved anyway." (By Stephen Morton)

Emma Mae Martin, who was once publicly singled out by her brother as an example of the debilitating effects of welfare dependency, is a high school dropout who later earned her diploma in night school as an adult. She and her brother don't talk politics or law or philosophy. Their conversations tend to be about, "well, not much really," Martin said. "Find out how I'm doing, what I'm up to, that's about it."

She lives her life and lets him be. "He's supposed to be a judge," she said, "but you can't judge anybody unless you judge yourself. I've never judged anybody, but people judge me all the time."

For many years, Thomas and his mother were not close, either. Her favorite son was Myers Thomas, Clarence's younger brother, who died in 2000 of a heart attack suffered during a morning jog. "Myers was the kindest-hearted one," she said. He called often, came to visit when she was lonely, took her for rides. "I had more dealing with Myers," she explained. "Me and Myers were more really open and close together."

Though Thomas had not always thought the best of his mother as a parent, when Myers died suddenly, it tore him apart and caused him to reexamine the life he was leading. "When my brother died," Thomas said later, "it showed me the other perspective, that not only do we do things in our professional life, but there is the family side of life -- the things that really matter."

He knew what Myers had meant to his mother, and gradually Thomas stepped into the role his brother had played.

In one particularly poignant moment for Leola Williams, the name she took after her fourth marriage, to David Williams in 1983, Thomas readied his mother for something he had long intended to tell her. "And I'm just sitting up, now I want to hear what it is," she recounted. And Thomas told her: "I just want to let you know that I love you. Hadn't been for you, I wouldn't have been here today. Hadn't been for you having me, I wouldn't be where I am today. So I give it all to you."

During summer, after the court has adjourned, Thomas loves nothing more than to be behind the wheel of his 40-foot motor home, tooling down the open road with his wife, Ginni, and his great-nephew Mark -- and a slice of Pin Point in tow. Growing up, he had never ventured beyond three counties in Georgia. Now, the experience has become essential to his happiness.

As Thomas once put it: "It allows me a sense of freedom."