What Happened to Clarence Thomas, Who Wanted to be a Black Panther and Idolized Malcolm X?

Thomas Was Once a Black Activist

By Ronald Reagan Presidential Library — https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/archives/photographs/large/c35696-12.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70174808

During the 100th anniversary of Malcolm X's birth, it’s appropriate to remember that among the Black men who once idolized him was Clarence Thomas. When Clarence Thomas was in college, he wore a beret, camouflage gear, and combat boots. He wanted to join the Black Panther Party and had a Malcolm poster on his bedroom wall, even memorizing some of his speeches.

By Joanbanjo — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=118100059

Clarence was once a militant radical, even participating in the 1969 Harvard Square riot to protest the Vietnam War. That event was one of many turning points in Clarence’s life; we are best served by starting at the beginning.

Clarence Thomas was born in Pin Point, GA. Pin Point is 1 mile wide and slightly longer. It’s a rural coastal settlement founded after the Civil War by freed enslaved people from nearby islands. You have to appreciate that long after America ended the International Slave Trade in 1808, smugglers continued to bring enslaved Africans to America. The African slaves were readily identifiable because they didn’t speak English like domestic-bred slaves. They were called the Gullah people and spoke with a Creole-influenced, thick accent known as Gullah-Geechie.

Clarence Thomas descended from the Gullah people and had a thick accent that often made him hard to understand. Not so much by people from his community but by white people, whom he has tried to please most of his life. His tradition of rarely speaking in Supreme Court oral hearings as an adult stems from his embarrassment about his speech as a child.

Thomas faced several struggles as a child, including poverty, colorism, and abandonment. His family was dead broke, living in a home with a single, broken outdoor commode. Thomas was mocked because of his dark skin, even by Black kids who called him “ABC,” America’s Blackest Child. Thomas’s father left their home when Clarence was two years old. His mother remarried multiple times while Clarence was young, with none of the men accepting Thomas as their son.

Clarence was sent to live with his grandfather. On the plus side was indoor plumbing; on the downside, his grandfather was abusive and often administered beatings to Clarence and his younger brother, Myers. Clarence literally rewrote his history with his grandfather, saying in his memoir, My Grandfather’s Son, the following:

“He was the one hero in my life. What I am is what he made me.”

Clarence was rejected by Black children, his mother, her husbands, and persecuted by his grandfather. Clarence found solace and appreciation in the Catholic Church. He became an altar boy and was readily available when needed for services. He attended a high school seminary for two years, where he resided on campus. He was praised for his devotion, and people thought he would become Savannah’s first Black priest. One of the Fathers told Clarence in hopes of motivating him,

“You have to learn to speak well, or you’ll be thought of as inferior.”

Whatever the Father intended, Thomas saw it as a negative experience. At night in the barracks, other kids would chant “nigger” into the night until Clarence could no longer stand it. He left the seminary and returned to his grandfather’s home. His grandfather threw him out, and Thomas had to fend for himself.

Fortunately, his Catholic connections secured him a place and a scholarship at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, outside Boston. There were fewer than 30 Black students on a campus of over 2,000. Clarence’s timing was excellent in that the college President, Father Brooks, was actively recruiting Black students through a process he called “affirmative action.”

His undergraduate period was during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and Clarence will tell you he was an angry young man. What truly set him off was the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr, and that of Bobby Kennedy.

You might have a hard time imagining Clarence Thomas in Black Panther gear, but he and other Black students at Holy Cross wore the outfit. For a time, Thomas was committed to the cause. He was down with “by any means necessary.” The period was full of civil rights protests and opposition to the Vietnam War. Clarence participated in one of the most violent war protests, pitting 4,000 students against 2,000 police officers. Thomas avoided arrest and returned to his dormitory room around 4 am. He was shaken by the experience and pulled away from his radical comrades, especially the Black ones.

Why Clarence Thomas Left the Black Power Movement Behind | FRONTLINE

“I got back to campus at four in the morning, horrified by what I’d just done. I had let myself be swept up by an angry mob for no good reason other than that I, too, was angry.” — Clarence Thomas

Clarence hadn’t entirely run away from his Black friends. His college girlfriend, Kathy Ambush, was Black. She attended a nearby women’s college. Immediately after his graduation, they married and later had a son. That marriage lasted ten years. When his next girlfriend, Lillian McEwen (who worked for Senator Joe Biden), was asked why Clarence married Kathy Ambush. She related that Clarence told her, “She was the first woman who was nice to me.” Clarence told her he felt he was “ugly” and had no previous success with women.

Thomas’s next move was to Yale, where he also benefited from race-based affirmative action. Clarence was an ambitious young man and went to Yale based on the expectation that he would get a great job offer after obtaining a Yale law degree. Thomas developed his hatred of affirmative action at Yale and affixed a 15-cent sticker to his 1974 law degree to demonstrate his opinion of its value.

“After graduating from Yale, I met a black alumnus of the University of Michigan Law School who told me that he’d made a point of not mentioning his race on his application. I wished with all my heart that I’d done the same. By then, I knew I’d made a mistake in going to Yale. I felt as though I’d been tricked that some of the people who claimed to be helping me were, in fact, hurting me.” — Clarence Thomas

Clarence Thomas reconciles with Yale after bitter years | Reuters

After graduating from Yale Law School, Clarence was appointed the Assistant Attorney General for Missouri and later spent a short time in private practice. He became a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator John Danforth in 1979. Two years later, he became the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education. The following year, Ronald Reagan made Thomas the Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). His rapid advancement came from meeting the right friends in high places, which has served him well to this day. Clarence Thomas had transformed himself from the man who once wanted to be a Black Panther and marched for equal rights.

You are likely familiar with much of his story regarding his nomination to the Supreme Court to replace Thurgood Marshall in 1991. He had that temporary setback when Professor Anita Hill came forward with allegations of sexual harassment.

From Thurgood Marshall to Clarence Thomas | by William Spivey | Democracy Guardian

Thomas made it to the bench and has been paying back those he resents ever since. A former law clerk attributed this statement to Thomas:

“The liberals made my life miserable for 43 years, and I’m going to make their lives miserable for 43 years.”

Thomas made that statement in 1991 after his confirmation, so he has eight years left to fulfill his promise. Thomas’s one-time idol, Malcolm X, once served at the Boston Mosque before Thomas did his time in the area at Holy Cross. I wonder what Malcolm X might have thought of the militant Clarence and the one we’re left with now? Food for thought.