CLARENCE THOMAS A TIMELINE
1948
Clarence Thomas is born in the Gullah/Geechee community of Pin Point, Georgia, to M. C. Thomas and Leola Williams. M. C. doesn’t stick around long.
1954–55
Thomas’s brother accidentally burns down their home. The family moves to Savannah, where Leola leaves her sons with her strict parents, who raise the boys.
1964–68
Thomas spends his final three years of high school and his first year of college preparing to be a priest. After a year at Immaculate Conception Seminary in Missouri, he transfers to the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, which was trying to add Black students.
1970
Thomas, who frequently wore combat fatigues in college, marches in a protest from Boston Common to Harvard Square, where a riot breaks out—fires, looting, mass injuries.
1971
Thomas marries Kathy Ambush just after graduating from college.
1973
Jamal Adeen Thomas, Thomas’s only child, is born.
1974
Thomas Yale Law graduates School. His from grandparents do not attend, citing too much work to do back home.
1974
John Danforth, Missouri attorney general and a fellow Yale Law grad, hires Thomas—and in 1979, as a U. S. senator, hires him again, as an aide.
1980
Washington Post writer Juan Williams praises Thomas after meeting him at a conference. The story is credited with introducing Thomas to the Reagan administration.
1982–90
As chair of the EEOC, Thomas is criticized for ignoring class-action suits. He also says Black civil-rights leaders “bitch, bitch, bitch, moan and moan, whine and whine” instead of trying to work with the administration.
1984
Thomas divorces Ambush.
1987
Thomas marries Virginia “Ginni” Lamp, whom he met at a conference on affirmative action. Soon after they met, she asked him how he coped with the EEOC controversy. He showed her a prayer he recited daily.
1991
President George H. W. Bush nominates Thomas to the Supreme Court. After a ninety-nine-day confirmation process that included accusations of sexual harassment from former colleague Anita Hill and accusations of racism from Thomas, the Senate confirms him, 52–48.
2006–16
In a remarkable streak, Thomas does not ask a question from the bench during arguments before the court.
JANUARY 6, 2021
On the day of the riot at the Capitol, Ginni Thomas cheers demonstrators on via social media, later saying that the posts were written before the violence began. Her connections to right-wing extremists spur calls for her husband to be removed from the court.
JUNE 24, 2022
In a 6–3 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Thomas writes, “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents.” Some commentators opine that, given his power and influence, Clarence Thomas has essentially become the de facto chief justice.