My Grandfather’s Son

My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir by Clarence Thomas, Harper Perennial, 2008. 

Grandfather

Clarence Thomas was brought up by his mother’s father, because his own father abandoned him. He was raised Roman Catholic. Clarence Thomas called this grandfather “Daddy”. Daddy raised Clarence and his brother Myers strictly. They were required to work on the farm and study hard. Daddy subscribed to the self-help philosophy of Booker T. Washington, where colored people tried to get ahead financially within the system as it existed, racism and all, by improving their work skills.

John Danforth

Thomas graduated from Yale Law School in 1974. In one of the most important of his early jobs as an attorney, Thomas worked for Missouri State Attorney General John Danforth. Thomas later moved to Washington, D.C. to work at the U.S. Department of Education. Next, he became the head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, also in D.C. He discusses his 1991 confirmation hearings but not his subsequent career on the U.S. Supreme Court.