40 Fun Facts About Clarence Thomas

Clarence Thomas went a full decade on the Supreme Court bench without doing what?

Ask a question is what he declined to do at oral arguments from February 2006 to February 2016; he has said he would rather listen and let the advocates make their case.

Clarence Thomas officiated at the wedding of which talk radio host, held in the justice's own home?

Rush Limbaugh married Marta Fitzgerald at the Thomas house in May 1994, with the justice presiding; the couple had met on the online service CompuServe.

Clarence Thomas, a summer RV traveler, has spent nights parked in which retailer's lots?

Walmart lots were an occasional overnight stop for the 40-foot converted tour bus he and his wife have owned since 1999, when its battery had enough power.

Which career did the teenage Clarence Thomas train for before classmates' racism drove him to quit?

Priest was the goal he pursued at two seminaries; he left in 1968, convinced that his church was doing too little to fight racism.

Which senator chaired the Judiciary Committee during Clarence Thomas's 1991 confirmation hearings?

Joe Biden, then a senator from Delaware, had the FBI rather than committee investigators look into the harassment claims, hoping to avoid any appearance of partisanship.

Fresh out of law school and short of cash, Clarence Thomas once tried without success to sell what?

His blood was what he offered at a blood bank, to no avail, while he was a penniless graduate studying for the bar exam.

Clarence Thomas, a NASCAR devotee, served in 1999 as grand marshal of which famous race?

Daytona 500 drivers got the command to start their engines from Thomas, who became the only Supreme Court justice to have filled the ceremonial role.

Whose retirement in 1991 opened the Supreme Court seat that Clarence Thomas was nominated to fill?

Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice, announced he was stepping down in June 1991, and Thomas became the second African American to sit on the Court.

Which future First Lady was a fellow student when Clarence Thomas attended law school?

Hillary Clinton, then Hillary Rodham, overlapped with Thomas on campus; a faculty member later said the two had the same kind of reputation as excellent students.

Which college football team does Clarence Thomas cheer for, thanks to his wife's family?

Nebraska Cornhuskers fandom came with his marriage to Omaha native Virginia Lamp; he keeps a Husker screen saver and has said he would move to Lincoln in a heartbeat.

Which creole language was the first language of Clarence Thomas's family?

Gullah was the everyday speech of his family, descendants of enslaved people on the Georgia coast; classmates later mocked him for the way he spoke.

In which tiny Georgia community, founded by freedmen after the Civil War, was Clarence Thomas born?

Pin Point sits on a tidal creek where crab and oyster canning was the main employer for decades; the old cannery is now a heritage museum.

In which Georgia city was Clarence Thomas raised by a relative who built a fuel delivery business?

Savannah is where Myers Anderson took in Thomas and his brother in 1955, giving the boys indoor plumbing and regular meals for the first time.

Clarence Thomas quit his first college over a classmate's cruel remark about whose shooting?

Martin Luther King Jr. was shot on April 4, 1968; overhearing a fellow student hope that he would die convinced Thomas to leave the school.

Which Jesuit college did Clarence Thomas enter as a transfer student and graduate from with honors?

Holy Cross, in Massachusetts, recruited him as one of its first Black students; he waited tables and washed dishes in the dining hall to cover his costs.

Which campus group did Clarence Thomas help found in college, later serving as its chairman?

Black Student Union members took up his idea of a walkout after some classmates were punished more harshly than others, and about 60 students left campus with him.

Whose poster did Clarence Thomas hang in his college dorm room in his student activist days?

Malcolm X fascinated the young Thomas, who read the activist's autobiography so many times that the pages of his copy wore down.

Which subject did Clarence Thomas choose as his college major because he had struggled with it?

English literature was a deliberate challenge for a student who had grown up speaking a coastal creole at home; he still finished ninth in his class.

Which law school did Clarence Thomas choose because it offered him the most financial aid?

Yale admitted him in 1971 as one of only 12 Black law students; Harvard accepted him too, but the better aid offer and an activist faculty won him over.

In which state did Clarence Thomas begin his legal career as an assistant attorney general?

Missouri gave him his first cases, in criminal appeals and then in tax matters; years later he called the post the best job he ever had.

Which future senator gave Clarence Thomas his first job after law school?

John Danforth made him the only African American on his staff of state lawyers, then brought him to Washington as a legislative aide handling energy issues.

Which agrochemical giant employed Clarence Thomas as a corporate lawyer in the late 1970s?

Monsanto put him in its legal department, but he found the work unsatisfying and soon left for a job on Capitol Hill.

Clarence Thomas ran the civil rights office of which Cabinet department in the early 1980s?

Education was his first presidential appointment, in 1981 at the age of 32; reluctant at first, he agreed only after his former boss and others pressed him to take the post.

Which federal agency did Clarence Thomas chair for eight years in the 1980s?

The EEOC, which enforces the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the workplace, saw settlement awards to victims of discrimination triple while he was chairman.

Which president put Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court after passing him over a year earlier?

George H. W. Bush had him on a shortlist of five in 1990 but picked David Souter instead, after advisers judged Thomas too inexperienced.

On which federal appeals court did Clarence Thomas sit for just 19 months before his promotion?

D.C. Circuit colleagues found him talkative and gregarious; he was that bench's youngest judge at 42 and wrote 19 opinions in his 19 months there.

Which failed Supreme Court nominee's old appeals court seat did Clarence Thomas take over in 1990?

Robert Bork had expounded on his judicial philosophy at his own hearings and lost; four years later Thomas remembered that and stayed guarded with senators.

Whose allegations led the Senate to reopen Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings in October 1991?

Anita Hill, a law professor who had worked for Thomas at two agencies, was questioned for seven hours; it was only the third time the Senate had reopened such hearings.

With which fellow justice did Clarence Thomas vote in 92 percent of cases over his first 13 years?

Antonin Scalia shared his originalist reading of the Constitution, though the pair later drifted apart as Thomas proved the more willing to overrule precedent.

Which memoir did Clarence Thomas publish in 2007 after receiving a $1.5 million advance?

My Grandfather's Son honors Myers Anderson, the stern man who raised him, and it reached number one on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list.

Clarence Thomas's wife Virginia, a conservative activist, is best known by which nickname?

Ginni Thomas, born Virginia Lamp, was a lobbyist and congressional aide when she married the future justice in 1987; she later founded the group Liberty Central.

Which NFL team has Clarence Thomas backed all his life while living in rival Washington territory?

Dallas Cowboys news reached him in daily team updates by e-mail, and he was a frequent guest in the visiting owner's box when the team played in Washington.

In his forties, Clarence Thomas drove which sports car with a Latin legal phrase on its plate?

A Corvette carried his plate reading Res Ipsa, the opening of a Latin phrase meaning that the thing speaks for itself, a key idea in negligence lawsuits.

Clarence Thomas made his staff watch the 1949 film The Fountainhead, based on which author's novel?

Ayn Rand's fiction left its mark on Thomas, who admits to some very strong libertarian leanings while declining to call himself a libertarian.

Which late-night host offered Clarence Thomas a million dollars a year to leave the Supreme Court?

John Oliver made the offer on Last Week Tonight in February 2024, set a 30-day deadline and sweetened it with a new motor coach valued at $2.4 million.

Which novelist does Clarence Thomas call the most influential writer in his life?

Richard Wright captured feelings Thomas says he had learned to repress; he ranks Native Son beside Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as his two favorite novels.

Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority in which case affirming a right to carry guns in public?

Bruen, decided in 2022, told courts to measure gun laws against the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation.

In his Gonzales v. Raich dissent, Clarence Thomas said Congress could not ban home growing of what?

Medical marijuana grown at home was no part of interstate commerce, he argued; if Congress could regulate it, Congress could regulate virtually anything.

Which vice president took his oath of office from Clarence Thomas at a presidential inauguration?

Mike Pence was sworn in by Thomas in January 2017 with his hand on two Bibles, his own and one that had belonged to Ronald Reagan.

Which economist wrote the book Clarence Thomas credits as the foundation of his philosophy?

Sowell, in Race and Economics, argued against government-led social reform and for individual effort in overcoming adversity; the young lawyer read it in 1975.