Thomas, Clarence

• Author: Jeffrey Lehman, Shirelle Phelps

Page 21

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas survived tense, nationally televised Senate confirmation hearings in 1991 to become the second African American in U.S. history to reach the Supreme Court.

Thomas was born June 23, 1948, in Pin Point, Georgia, a small town near Savannah. He attended Savannah's Saint Benedict the Moor, Saint Pius X High School, and Saint John Vianney Minor Seminary. When he graduated from Saint John in 1967, he was the only African American in his class. After just one year as a seminarian at Missouri's Immaculate Conception Seminary, Thomas abandoned his plans to become a priest. Instead, he enrolled in Massachusetts's Holy Cross College. After graduating in 1971, he attended Connecticut's Yale University Law School, and earned a doctor of JURISPRUDENCE degree in 1974.

Thomas married Kathy Grace Ambush in 1971. The couple had a son, Jamal Thomas, in 1973, and divorced in 1984. In 1986, he married Virginia Lamp, a political activist and a lawyer for the U.S. LABOR DEPARTMENT.

Thomas's first job out of law school was as assistant to Missouri's Republican attorney general John C. Danforth...