Fan mail address
Clarence Thomas
US Supreme Court
1 1st St NE
Washington, DC 20543-0001
USA
Address information
US Supreme Court
(Administrative Building)
1 1st St NE
Washington, DC 20543-0001
USA
Phone: (202) 479-3211
Clarence Thomas, born on June 23, 1948, in Pin Point, Georgia, is an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court and one of the most influential and enduring conservative voices in American jurisprudence. Raised in a small, impoverished Gullah-speaking community, Thomas’s early life was marked by hardship, resilience, and a transformative journey from poverty to the nation’s highest court. After his father left the family, Thomas’s mother struggled to make ends meet, leading him to be raised primarily by his maternal grandparents. His grandfather, Myers Anderson, was a strict disciplinarian who instilled in Thomas a strong work ethic and a deep sense of personal responsibility, values that would shape his worldview and later inform his judicial philosophy.
Thomas attended segregated Catholic schools in Savannah, Georgia, where he initially planned to join the priesthood. However, his experience with racism in the seminary and broader American society profoundly affected him, and he eventually abandoned this path. Thomas went on to attend the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, where he was a standout student, earning a reputation for his academic rigor and activism in the civil rights movement. He later attended Yale Law School, graduating in 1974. Despite his prestigious education, Thomas has stated that he faced challenges finding job opportunities due to both his race and his outspoken conservative beliefs.
Thomas’s early career included various roles in government and the private sector, including as an Assistant Attorney General in Missouri, legislative assistant to Missouri Senator John Danforth, and later as Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education under President Ronald Reagan. In 1982, he was appointed to head the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a position in which he oversaw significant administrative changes aimed at streamlining the agency and emphasizing individual responsibility over what he viewed as a dependency on government support. During his tenure, Thomas focused on enforcing anti-discrimination laws while emphasizing policies that aligned with his conservative principles, gaining recognition for his work among Republicans.
