Thomas and his brother made it in the white world. Their sister, reared by an aunt, had four children and went on welfare.; Thomas, 43, credits everything he has achieved to his grandparents. He choked up twice on national television Monday when he mentioned them. In a hostile world, they taught him to rely on himself. They shaped his views on individualism, race and society, views that guide him today.; "I was raised to survive under the totalitarianism of segregation," Thomas wrote in a paper for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy institute in Washington. "We were raised to survive in spite of the dark, oppressive cloud of governmentally sanctioned bigotry.; Self-sufficiency, security; "Self-sufficiency and spiritual and emotional security were our tools to carve out and secure freedom," he added. "Those who attempt to capture the daily counseling, oversight, common sense and vision of my grandparents in a governmental program are engaging in sheer folly."; The very beliefs that have brought Thomas to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court make him suspect to black political activists, veterans of the struggle to make government accountable for the wrongs done to blacks.; Yet as Washington Post journalist Juan Williams has pointed out, Thomas is firmly grounded in the black intellectual tradition of Booker T. Washington, who advocated education, self-reliance and mutual support as the principal means of advancement.; Clarence Thomas was born June 23, 1948, in Pinpoint, Ga., a town in the marshes near Savannah. His mother, Leola, 18 at the time, lived in a house that had no plumbing.; Before Thomas' second birthday, his father moved to the North and left the family behind. His mother remarried, and her second husband did not want the children of her first marriage.; Taken in by grandparents; At age 7, Thomas was sent to live with his grandparents. His grandfather, Myers Anderson, had little formal schooling. But life had taught him a lot.; "He could barely read and write -- read enough to read the Bible," Thomas said in a 1983 interview with the Washington Post. "But he was a tough old man."; He elaborated in the Heritage Foundation paper: "Of course, I thought my grandparents were too rigid and their expectations were too high. I also thought they were mean at times. . . . The most compassionate thing they did for us was teach us how to fend for ourselves in a hostile environment."; But the world that lay beyond the confines of poverty and segregation was not totally closed to Thomas. His grandfather, a Catholic, enrolled him in an all-black school run by the church. On Monday, Thomas also made sure to thank "the nuns."; As a young man, he wanted to become a priest. In 1967, he was accepted at the all-white Immaculate Conception Seminary in Conception Junction, Mo. He was in for a shock. Other seminarians referred to him as the "black spot on a white horse." Disgusted, he left at the end of his first year.; Flirts with 'black power'; Thomas went on to attend Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass. In the 1960s, he flirted with the politics of "black power" and considered himself a follower of Malcolm X. But his true interest was in the law. He received his law degree from Yale University in 1974.; As a young lawyer, Thomas worked in the office of Missouri Attorney General John C. Danforth. He later joined Monsanto Co.; Thomas' introduction to Washington came in 1979. By then, Danforth was a Republican senator. Thomas, a former Democrat, joined his staff as a legislative assistant.; In 1982, after a year as assistant education secretary for civil rights, Thomas was named by President Reagan to lead the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.; His tenure at the commission, which investigates discrimination complaints, was controversial. Critics said the agency went soft under Thomas. Abandoning support for hiring goals and timetables, Thomas focused on resolving thousands of individual discrimination complaints. He took credit for improving efficiency.; When President Bush nominated Thomas to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, a steppingstone to the Supreme Court, a contentious confirmation process was forecast. But the hearings went smoothly, perhaps because Thomas was never among the Reagan administration's most outspoken critics of civil rights. He took his seat on the appeals court in March 1990.; Thomas, who lives in suburban Virginia, is married and has a son.; "In my view," he said of his life Monday, "only in America could this have been possible."
Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court justice, attributes his values to his grandparents who raised him in his early years. They, more than anyone else, shaped his beliefs on self-reliance, individualism, and determination to survive under segregation. Thomas was born of poor parents in 1948 in Pinpoint, Georgia. He attended religious schools for a time. He left after discovering that they were not a haven from segregation. Thomas' real interest was the law. He graduated from Yale Law in 1974. He was selected for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1990. Thomas lives with his wife and son in Virginia.