MY GRANDFATHER’S SON: A Memoir
Clarence Thomas
HarperCollins
Memoir
ISBN: 9780060565558

• Read an Excerpt

Clarence Thomas is a complex man who rose from a life of poverty in the segregated Deep South to become an associate justice on the United States Supreme Court. In his candid memoir, Justice Thomas chronicles his journey and pays tribute to the one real hero in his life --- his maternal grandfather.

On June 23, 1948, a sweltering night in Pinpoint, Georgia, “when the air is so wet that you can barely draw breath,” Clarence Thomas is born to M.C. and Leola “Pigeon” Thomas. Delivered by a midwife in his Aunt Annie’s house, Clarence is, in his mother’s words, “too stubborn to cry.” Two years later his parents are divorced and his father moves to Philadelphia, leaving the family behind.

In the summer of 1955, “without a word of explanation,” Pigeon sends Clarence and his younger brother Myers to live with their grandparents. On the morning the boys move in, his grandfather, whom he calls Daddy, tells them, “The damn vacation is over.” While almost all other family members belong to Baptist or other Protestant churches, Daddy is a Roman Catholic convert. Daddy makes sure the boys are educated in the structured and disciplined environment of St. Benedict the Moor Grammar School. At St. Benedict’s Clarence is treated with respect by the nuns and pushed to do his best. At home he is expected to pull his load. After graduation, he attends St. Pius X, Savannah’s only Catholic high school for blacks.

A few months shy of his 16th birthday, Clarence believes he has a calling to become a priest and transfers to Saint John Vianney seminary school. Clarence is one of the first African-American students admitted. After graduation, he and several other classmates head for Immaculate Conception seminary, near Kansas City, Missouri. During his time there, Clarence begins to doubt his vocation. He leaves the seminary, although he knows his decision will break the promise he made to Daddy not to quit. Shortly after returning home, Daddy asks him to leave, saying he will probably turn out like his ‘“no-good daddy or those other no-good Pinpoint Negroes.’” With nowhere else to turn, Clarence moves in with his mother. It is 1968 --- a year of riots, assassinations and disillusion --- the year that he becomes an “angry black man.”

To prove his daddy wrong, Clarence enrolls in Holy Cross College in Boston to finish his education. There he meets other black students who feel disillusioned as he does, and he joins them in protest demonstrations. Clarence also becomes acquainted with Kathy Ambush, a student at a nearby Catholic school for women. He decides to pursue a law degree at Yale, and in 1971, he and Kathy are married.

When a friend tells him that John Danforth, a Yale Law School graduate serving as Missouri’s Attorney General, is looking for other Yalies to work for him, once again Clarence moves to Missouri --- this time to Jefferson City with Kathy. He works in the attorney general’s office, where job satisfaction is high but the salary is not. A few years later he accepts a higher paid position with Monsanto Chemical Company in St. Louis, but he finds little job satisfaction there.

After being offered another job working for Danforth, who has become a U.S. Senator, he and Kathy pack up and head for Washington, D.C. His connection with Danforth, along with his reputation and keen mind, gets him noticed by influential Republicans who see him as a rising star. But on the home front all is not well. Eventually he and Kathy divorce. He leaves Kathy and their son Jamal and throws himself into his work, and at times, he loses himself in a bottle.

Clarence later meets Virginia Bess Lamp. In 1987 she becomes his second wife and his “pillar of love, strength, and support.” Her support comes in handy when he is nominated by President George Bush to fill a vacancy on the United States Supreme Court. In 1991, after a bitter confirmation hearing that includes allegations of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, he is appointed the first black Supreme Court justice. 

MY GRANDFATHER’S SON is Clarence Thomas’s deeply personal and eloquent story of faith, hope and courage. But most of all it is a loving tribute to his grandfather --- the man whose hard work, discipline and determination made it possible for a child born into a life of poverty and segregation to become a justice on the United States Supreme Court.

   --- Reviewed by Donna Volkenannt (dvolkenannt@charter.net)

Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com.

© Copyright 1996-2008, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.

Back to top.