In 1991, President George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, then a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and former chairman of the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, to replace Thurgood Marshall on the U.S. Supreme Court.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, under the chairmanship of now-Vice President Joe Biden, allowed Thomas’s nomination hearings to become a circus in which Thomas was dragged through a personal hell, resulting in him saying, after his confirmation: “Mere confirmation, even to the Supreme Court, seemed pitifully small compensation for what had been done to me.”
Unsubstantiated and graphic claims of sexual harassment against Thomas, brought by Anita Hill, a black attorney who worked for him at the Department of Education and at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, were given full and open airing at the hearings.
Rather than the nomination and appointment of a black man, who rose from humble and poor roots, to the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming a moment of pride for the nation and for black Americans, it was transformed, at these hearings, into an opportunity for character assassination and shame.
This sickening and shameful display should be a mistake of history we choose to forget. Yet, because Thomas is a conservative, liberals will never give up their ongoing campaign to destroy him.
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Not just black men, but all men!
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