Associate Justice Clarence Thomas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American jurist and has been an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 1991. He is the second African American to serve on the nation's highest court, after Justice Thurgood Marshall. Thomas's career in the Supreme Court has seen him take a conservative approach to cases while adhering to the postulates of originalism.

Clarence Thomas was born in Pin Point, Georgia, a small community outside Savannah. His father abandoned his family when he was only a year old, leaving his mother Leola Anderson to take care of the family. At age seven they went to live with his mother's father, Myers Anderson, in Savannah. He had a fuel oil business that also sold ice; Thomas often helped him make deliveries.

His grandfather believed in hard work and self-reliance and would counsel him to "never let the sun catch you in bed in the morning." In 1975, when Thomas read Race and Economics by economist Thomas Sowell, he found an intellectual foundation for this philosophy. The book criticized social reforms by government and instead argued for individual action to overcome circumstances and adversity. He was also influenced by Ayn Rand's bestselling book The Fountainhead, and would later require his staffers to watch the 1949 film version. The plot describes an architect's struggle to maintain his integrity against the forces of conformity, something Thomas could relate to his own career in the U.S. government.

Raised Roman Catholic (he later attended an Episcopal church with his wife, but returned to the Catholic Church in the late 1990s), Thomas considered entering the priesthood, attending St. John Vianney's Minor Seminary on the Isle of Hope near Savannah, and he briefly attended Conception Seminary College, a Catholic seminary in Missouri. Thomas told interviewers that he left the seminary (and the call for priesthood) after overhearing a student say "Good, I hope the SOB dies" when he heard that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot.

Thomas later attended College of the Holy Cross, where he co-founded the school's Black Student Union, which successfully demanded segregated dormitory space for black students, and received an A.B., cum laude. He received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Yale Law School in 1974.

Thomas has one child, Jamal Adeen, from his first marriage. This marriage, to Kate Ambush, lasted from 1971 until their 1984 divorce. Thomas married Ginni Lamp in 1987. After Thomas' nephew, Mark Elliot Martin, was convicted of pointing a pistol at another person in 1997, Martin gave permission for Thomas to take custody of Martin's son, who was six years old at the time.

Since joining the Supreme Court, Thomas requested an annulment of his first marriage from the Catholic Church, which was granted by the Tribunal of the Catholic Diocese of Arlington. He was reconciled to the Catholic Church in the mid-1990s and remains a practicing Catholic.

In 1994, Thomas performed, at his home, the wedding ceremony for conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh's third marriage, to Marta Fitzgerald.

As his wife grew up in Nebraska and attended college there, Thomas is an avid Nebraska Cornhuskers fan, and in 2007 met with the 2006 National Championship Husker Volleyball team, telling them he bled Husker red.