Clarence Thomas interviewed by Julian Bond: Explorations in Black Leadership Series

justice thomas thank you for being with us on expirations and black leadership thank you i want to begin with a question about brown v board i know it was decided the year before you entered elementary school but did you have some sense that this was a big deal well not at the time the big deal was learning the multiplication table and how to add those sorts of things but it was as the years went on particularly 56 57 you got a sense of it because there was quite a bit of talk about it my grandfather was very involved with the naacp for example so you you heard that you also heard uh or as i mentioned and when i wrote my memoirs that we saw the impeach earl warren signs along highway 17 going to liberty county and i always wondered who this earl warren was and later on of course i would figure it out that it was the chief justice of the united states and he was in trouble in part because of brown i guess there's no way i could say did you ever think that you'd be sitting at the building where earl warren worked well not only didn't i think of that i didn't think that i would ever see the building that where he worked now as you found out what it meant as you grew older did you have some idea of what it might mean what it could mean as opposed to what it may have turned out to me you know my grandfather was an interesting man he of course dominated our lives and he felt that as you as these rights were vindicated that we had an obligation to measure up to use them i'll give you a separate example when the savannah public library finally desegregated and we were allowed to go to the main library his point was that we were obligated to use it that is we had to show up no matter what and we had to read books because we finally had a right to do so so when it came to education as the rights became available we had an obligation to use them properly so he would say to me in 1964 when i went to a seminary which was previously all white he said don't shame me and don't shame the race in other words you have to perform do you think that the brown decision had something to do with opening the doors and the seminary that you attended oh i think the seminary i think it had an impact in lots of ways absolutely and that was 1964. that was 10 years later and things were changing slowly but absolutely i think it got the ball rolling i think it changed attitudes it changed the legal arrangements the it that people like phyllis kravitz who's on the 11th circuit now she was a on the board of on education in savannah and started moving things in that direction back then and she's just and so in in talking with her and people like ww law and savannah uh and previously before that saul c johnson who ran the informant savannah absolutely so it was a combination of things that moved us in that direction so yes it did have an impact but yet at the same time you've been critical of the jurisprudence that created brown oh i think they the that not critical in that sense uh it could have been stronger in the sense that i mean we all when we do opinions you look at another opinion and you say well i don't agree with this approach or that but no not with the bottom line obviously so what do you think it has turned out to mean the brown decision all these years later oh i think it it really did something that was could have been done back when plessy was decided in the 1890s and that is to affirm something that's in clear in the 14th amendment and that is that all citizens had the same rights all citizens of the united states and made it possible and guess just in a practical way for us all to have or at least have a possibility to have the same education i mean it's you know if you look for example i happen to be a big sports fan and when i grew up games like georgia florida met nothing it meant nothing because those schools were segregated now if you had savannah state playing south carolina state that meant something or florida a m came into town that meant something because we had some connection with them but now when you watch the georgia florida game or you watch the alabama game you have such a large number of black athletes involved so you can see that even there just from a perception or just a sports or entertainment standpoint it's quite different and similarly now when you visit the campuses i go to university of georgia that's a campus that was not open to me and uh so i think it's changed quite a bit so and you can trace all these to brown oh obviously i think that the that's the beginning and that's something that could have been done years before i've i've read i think that you you think that uh brown is sort of a precursor of affirmative action that it opened the door no not really no no i don't think so i don't think i've ever said that no no i'm not quoting you as having said that but but just that brown happened and then the enforcement of brown or the uh carrying out of brown opened the door for a kind of of racial spoil system no not really i think that you know that's you know the the you know you can debate that but that's sort of the structural injunction sort of that where you the remedy is something where you set up a broad system rather than than deal with these the the the case before you but that's no that's i don't think that's accurate okay i stand corrected now how do you think brown impacted your life uh you talked about these private schools which are not touched by brown that were open to you because of brown what other ways do you think brown affected your life oh i think um just sitting here just the fact that we're here i mean just think about it the to the extent that people had sentiments that were inconsistent with the constitution that were somehow enforceable either by custom or by law brown was one of the major pieces that began the erosion of those customs and those attitudes and whether it's in parks the public facilities whether it's in on public accommodations later on uh but it changed i mean and i was right there at the the late 60s as it was just beginning to change it wasn't changed yet but just think of something as simple as being able to go have a burger at one of the big boys in savannah you couldn't do it so yes i mean it's changed tremendously i don't i think it would you can't overestimate the overestimate significance of it who are the people who've been most significant in helping you develop your talents i know the influence your grandfather had but are there other people besides him you know i'd have to really stay close to home with that because you know as the years have passed and i think about the people i've learned about or the people who have had been participated in my education etc it all goes back to the most crucial parts of my life and those would be people like my neighbors my cousins these were uneducated people in liberty county you've been there right you've been around bryan county you've been out in rural parts of chatham county and those people had more of a direct influence on me now in the educational arena i have to start with the nuns because the thing that they never bought into was this sense that was that somehow we were different that and we were to be treated separately their expectations were that we were going to parochial schools and we would learn the parochial school curriculum and there were no excuses so they had an influence uh but then it goes on from there and it gets a little bit easier once you start there but i would i would have to start with now one you picked out for a special mention is sister mary virgilius tell me about her she is still alive she is in her mid-90s she is an irish immigrant she's been she was went in the convent in 1931. she was originally as far as our diocese was concerned she was in augusta at immaculate conception and then she came to savannah remember those immaculate conception and saint benedict's and savannah had been orphanages and they eventually got rid of the orphanages and became grammar schools but she was unyielding in her attitude that you would do well it was consistent with my grandfather's attitude because i mean as a kid i'm 12 13 years old i want to do what 12 and 13 year olds do i want to have fun and my grandfather's view and hers was that we did not have the luxury in the 50s to have fun that we had an obligation to perform and to do well and a moment ago you mentioned neighbors uh what about neighbors what did neighbors do for you that's a really good question it's fascinating nobody has ever asked me that me um what they do is they reinforce the people around you reinforce i mean for example if you're learning piano or an instrument or sports it's called take repetitions repeating it over and over and over and over well neighbors tended to reinforce what you were getting at home what you were getting at school what you were getting at your church the positive things what you got at the carnegie library in savannah it was all the same message and so my cousin hattie or miss mariah miss beck miss gertrude miss gladys next door it was all the same message are these people sort of like surrogate parents i mean in addition to your grandmother and grandfather they're helping reinforce what they're telling you yes it's all it was consistent they were my neighbors and you know in the south of course when anybody could tell you what to do you know anybody could tell you to go to the store to buy some snuff some honey bee snuff or whatever they wanted at the time some stand back or some anison that they took quite frequently but the and then they could i remember one day i was on east broad and henry street just down a few blocks from our house and we were cautioned never to cross the street against the light and of course i'm a kid so we crossed against the light you know there's no traffic so we ran across and out of the back window of the bus you heard this voice i'm going to tell teeny on you that was the worst voice ever to hear that was miss gertrude and before we got home i don't know how she got the message to my grandmother but before we got home she had informed her that we'd cross the street against the light whereupon we were informed that your granddaddy will deal with you when he comes home and that was the or he said your daddy will daddy will deal with you when you get home and that's the worst threat you could ever have do these people feel free to discipline you as well oh they couldn't wait for daddy they didn't have the need because they could they knew the fear of my grandfather was more than enough to discipline us but if they had to yes and then they would we would get a second one from my grandfather oh boy do you remember specific events historical or personal that you view as critical to your understanding of american society and history events from the civil rights movement events in your neighborhood events in savannah something that lets you know where you were who you were what was expected of you or not expected of you you know i that would be hard i don't think it's more a specific event uh i think it was a daily event and it occurred i mean with the neighbors or with the teachers it's a small world we lived a short walk from our school our grammar school an even shorter walk from saint pius attend high school the farm was out in liberty county it was a 45 minute drive even on in that traffic on highway 17 and it was all the same the same attitudes the same culture so i don't think of anything as one sporadic event occurring that shaped me it was a continuum or a continuity of events a series of events in our lives our daily lives that had the greatest influence you write about your grandfather being called boy by white woman and and struggling to restrain himself from stabbing a white man after another assault what what effect did these have on you oh i you know i don't know as a kid it uh i think it had a great effect on my grandfather which in turn had a great effect on me he was an independent man as a result of things that happened in his life and he was a man who thought that you know when you talk of freedom he talked of independence that is the ability to do for yourself the ability to grow your food and he was a very active member in the naacp we went to meetings we went there at four o'clock meetings on sunday he would take us along so we had to learn because we had to learn he thought that we should learn how to read so that we weren't like him where he was had to work with his hands he wanted us to learn how to work with our minds and be a part of but i think it had an influence on him because both it wasn't that he had an assault um from the jump from the man on his ice truck it was that he confronted him and and said some unpleasant things to him and my grandfather's reaction was was intensely passionate that he wanted to he felt like he was going to harm that man and the the the boy incident was different because we were there the first one we were not there that was just an account that he gave us we were there as little kids and and to watch him first look at us and then look back at her then look at us again and then know it's almost as though he made a decision that i have got to raise my boys that discipline to imagine knowing him the discipline it took for him to do the right thing and the responsible thing you think he looked at you to test what your reaction would be to this insult he'd received or to see whether or not you had noticed it and absorbed it in any particular way i think it was a blow and i think that um he noticed us as we noticed him and as little kids you know i think you think now what are you going to do and how are you going to deal with it you're the greatest man we know and the some people seem you know they seem emboldened by those sorts of things and take off in the wrong direction and do something can ult that can ultimately be self-destructive he did the hard thing to to to to hold his discipline and it's a lesson to me to my brother that even when you might feel strongly about something or feel justified in doing something that could be self-destructive that you must do something that's more uh prudent and certainly beneficial and constructive in the long run so maybe putting too much in this sort of exercise in self-control that's right look at how i'm reacting to this this is a lesson for you remember what he said that's precisely the point that i'm making remember as i said earlier in my memoirs he always said to us that i will never tell you to do as i say i will always tell you to do as i do that is a hard burden to put on yourself yeah because we did indeed watch him we were kids we were always around him it isn't like today where parents are hauling kids around the soccer and it's like the parents are working for the kids now it was the other way around when we were kids we were like the little ducklings following the leader were there any incidents in the news when you were growing up in savannah that let you know who you were and what some people thought about you or how you ought to think about yourself oh i you know i can remember being herded into our little den that's where the motorola tv was and the news was a big deal in those days and we all had to watch what was going on in little rock and being horrified and later on we'd see the hosings and you know we'd watch what happened in birmingham and the fire hoses the dogs things like that and it really oh absolutely had a tremendous impact on all of us i'm the same age as the little rock nine and they had a big influence on me because they were my age and i saw people like me in birmingham i'm guessing in 63 i was in the eighth grade so these are children roughly your age did the fact that these young people were doing this uh speak to you more profoundly than it might have done had they been older people well first the i was yes i was in the ninth grade when when that happened in ninth grade as a young kid you begin to feel your oats a little bit and you begin to have this sense that we should be doing something and i can remember my grandfather distinctly telling us no way you're not old enough that your job is to go to school your job is to learn that's what all this is about and so yes i mean you saw it all you saw other parts of the country and you also read about what was happening in savannah the lunch counters the kids from savannah state with the with the sit-ins my grandfather and hush hush conversations to use his property to for bail working with the naacp yes and it can't but have an effect on you a few minutes ago you mentioned wesley law who was long-time president of the naacp in savannah a man whom i knew fleetingly but an impressive guy did other people who who sat in this sheriff said well there was a man in my town who was a leader in race matters civil rights things and he was pointed out to me as somebody not that i ought to imitate but just somebody doing things for the race was mr law he was revered yeah i mean in our household i mean the ww law we called him it was on the he was a male man and he was very active he was the leader he was someone who was very supportive and you know we disagreed on things some matters years later but those disagreements didn't change things with me and how i looked at him but he was just a man who stood up when it looked like it was dangerous to stand up you know he was one who said this is wrong and i'm going to work to make changes um the other people that i didn't know who were revered in our household again phyllis and aaron aaron kravitz was a local lawyer in savannah who happened to be jewish and allowed black lawyers to use his law library and things like that and his daughter phyllis kravitz who's now in the 11th circuit court of appeals they were revered in our house and there were any number of others who uh would fight back or who would actually show up to the meetings and that's what my grandfather would talk about who showed up and who didn't show up who had property to use for bail money and who refused to allow their property to be used there's another gentleman in our area sam williams who was a friend of my grandfather who was also involved so these people are held up to you as exemplars exactly they're they're doing things and not necessarily that you have to do these things but they're doing things that are admirable and uh setting an example for others and and the ones who don't do these things are in effect letting the community down i think his it was different then because they didn't always agree on what it was they should be doing and as you remember years later uh when some of us became very radical we actually were critical of the sort of go slow approach or people working within the system but my grandfather's attitude was that you should do something you should not just sit and do nothing and you didn't have to always agree on what that something was but you don't just accept the status quo because you are lazy or you're fearful and they were put up they were shown as examples of people who actually took the risk and made the effort to do something even if it was something that you didn't necessarily agree with they were doing something they were doing some as opposed to those who did nothing at all let me take you back to the time when you're at immaculate conception seminary and you hear the news of martin luther king's assassination and a white seminarian gloats this sob is finally dead and you described that as the final straw in an interview you did with the san diego tribune in 1998 what did that do to it seems to have set you off the path to the priesthood well it i had been that was my fourth year in the seminary and i was always a little bit you know not always but that year i was beginning to be a little shaky about it but actually what he says that's good i hope the sob dies and that wasn't so much that i was um uh following every move of dr king because there were others at the time you know this would be an era when you were beginning to get this sort of beginning of the black power thing malcolm x had been around and there had been some more dissension than people talk about today but there was as you know some dissension and but that wasn't it it was more it was deeper than that that this was a man of god who was again whether you agreed or disagreed was doing something right and he was doing something for good why would a fellow seminary and wish him dead and that was the end of it and i had already been having some difficulties with my vocation and this was the end at the same time something else was happening this sort of racial awareness the fact that uh as you got older and you thought more deeply i've been talking with a fellow seminarian and who was also black and and quite a bit older and the more i thought about it i thought that the church should have been doing more to to to point out that this is morally wrong and objectionable and of course that was not the case at least as i saw it it probably was but i was looking at it from my very limited perspective at that time so yes it was the end of of my vocation that day and then you write later or talk later about an ex experience at holy cross when you joined a protest in harvard square in 1970 and then began to ask yourself again according to this interview in the san diego union tribune why was i doing this rather than using my intellect explain these circumstances well that goes back to my grandfather he said that you know there are gifts that you have there are opportunities that you're given to elevate to become more informed to become better educated and there was more available and so we had an obligation to do more with it not to be in the streets to be actually learning to think these things through not just reacting on this kind of visceral level and i couldn't figure out why i was there and i was very upset i mean if you were on a lot of these college campuses then and you're like 19 20 years old a lot of us were upset and but there was more to it let's go back because let's hearken back to the point i made about him the lady insulting my grandfather in front of him us he had to make some decisions he had to react in a different way in a way that he felt was constructive and again that example is there what would he do what would he expect of me and i think he expected much more of me than what i was doing and did you have a sense that uh what he expected of you what that was as opposed to what you were doing you were you were protesting some something in in harvard square and you said to yourself my grandfather would have wanted me to do something else did you what was that something else he wanted me to go to school um he did not have great confidence in me at that at this point because i'd become quite radicalized and he did not understand that but he would want me to go to school and he would want me to learn because he never had that chance and a gift that i did have was the capacity the ability to do well in school and to learn very rapidly so even though he may not have known that you were in harvard square marching up and down he wanted you to be in the library and the classroom paying attention to what you were at in school for get some benefit out of being there you know we all have kids and they go off yeah and we still have expectations of them and i know i always dragged around what i thought his expectations were of me and i think i referred to him in my memoirs as a brooding omnipresent and so he's always there even to this day yesterday was the 24th 25th anniversary of his death as is this week is the 40th uh anniversary of the assassination of dr king and it's just it's there's some things that always are there just that date is always there and very poignant the events of 1968 and april of 68 are always there the poignant the assassination of bobby kennedy is always there in 1968 the assassination of john f kennedy it's always there there's some of these big events like my death and my grandparents and and the ones i've mentioned that are always there there's some others but you never kind of forget them as reference points so the person of my grandfather even to this day never evaporates it's always there that's why when you asked me earlier about the early influences i go right back to that source because i you know you read kant you read nietzsche you read thomas aquinas you you you listen to your philosophy professors you you meet people over the years you read all sorts of books and what i've found is that i have no sort of intimacy with them i see the words i see the written words i see the thoughts the ideas but the person who's touched the whole person is back home it's my grandparents really so in in spite of the reading the education you've had but college at yale i'm guessing um that this is an ever-present influence on you and the most dominant despite the fact that he's passed away 25 years ago still the most dominant that's a remarkable tribute to him well i think that you know the the as i you know as i say in my book that he was the greatest man i've ever known i mean i really you know he did the right thing when it was easy to do the wrong thing and the i think that it's easy today to vent to be upset but is that always the right thing i mean if we you and i saw a couple of guys we knew in a bar and they had a legitimate beef with each other we wouldn't say go and have it out right we try to figure out a way how do you all deal with this in a constructive way if you your kids or your grandkids are having a little disagreement you pull them apart and say now what's the right way to deal with this and i think that's what he was trying to show us with his own life because there were lots of things lots of insults and slights and injustices and unfairness that just sort of nipped away at him just pecked at him the entire entirety of his life and yet he showed us how to deal with all of that and continue on in a positive and constructive way so yes i mean he sits there as that great model for me so you found a way not to be dragged down by these things but to push on and to hold himself that's right hold himself direct and proud and to achieve and to accomplish in spite of it all and to figure out a way to uh get his boys to do the same thing let me shift gears a little bit how did you choose your career you know i was in the seminary and i had in law school i spent a lot of time i'd always felt that those of us to whom much is given of him much is expected and we'd always whether we had corn or beans or peas we always took it to those who needed extra or needed something and so it came natural and as someone who was going to become a priest it was a calling that you would help other people why else i mean how do you show love but to reach out to those who are less fortunate and so you started tutoring i worked in community programs even in college in law school mental hospitals uh we did the free breakfast program and and on that's the more radical days and um so i when i got to law school i worked in those days we talked about being in the community what was the decision to go to law school again is it tied to helping others yeah it's time to be going back to savannah that's the point i was going to get to it was a part of the vocation you know when you cease being a priest and how do you now help what was going on in savannah in 1967 68 69 what was happening you know that society was changing there was resistance there was still unfairness and another name you may remember from savannah from georgia's bobby hill i was just thinking about it that was my hero that was my model yeah and i didn't know him that well because there were you know of course other problems but from a distance that was the model to go back and be a part of that he and fletcher farrington hill jones and fashion yeah yeah that was my goal to go work for him really that was a path breaking integrated law that's right and i was in that firm there was clarence martin was in that firm he since passed away fletcher was there bill coleman junior was there oh well yeah for one year and i was there that summer and it was just um uh roy allen who since you know passed away he was also there right so that carlton stewart who's in georgia he was there yeah i served with roy in the legislature yeah well but my point is simply that my specific goal i've never worked for a law firm other than that law firm my specific goal was to go back and be a part of that firm and how did that not happen well i worked there in the summer of 1973 and reached the conclusion that it was not the right place and it was heartbreaking and it also caused further distance between my grandfather and me because it was clear then that i would not be returning to savannah at that time i wondered was there another opportunity for you legally in savannah besides the hill law firm were there other firms that might have did you approach them i tried in different ways i wrote letters and you know called around the answers no nor were there any opportunities in atlanta well that's why i didn't wind up in atlanta i just as i've said you know i received a series of rejections from atlanta and that is why i wound up in jefferson city missouri you know when maynard jackson stopped being mayor after two terms no law firm in atlanta made him an offer he had to go to chicago to find work anyway so you end up in jefferson city missouri and you're doing um as i understand it mostly tax work and other kinds of things i started out with criminal appellate work oh really i did we you that was the beginning it was really interesting because you show up of course you have to pass the bar exam i lived with margaret mrs margaret wilson that summer she was which was great and was a great learning experience in many ways and on september 14 i became a member of the bar missouri on september 17 i argued my first case before the supreme court of missouri and so you can imagine what i was like i was 26 years old and but it was the job was great i mean that there was an enormous amount of work to do and this was purely uh it's a one of these swim or sink situations there was very little supervision because people didn't have time the great part about it was that it was the work came to you in an indiscriminate manner there was so much of it it just poured in and you just did it as it came in it was a wonderful experience the other great part of it was that i worked for a person who was a good man so the even today i advise my law clerks or any kids who ask me for advice to work for the person not the job because again it's sort of like my learning from my grandfather you can learn so much by observing a good person and having a good person work uh supervised that good person with john danforth dan foreign and one thing i'll just be brief here that he did he showed me is he never mixed the politics of his job with the function of the office so we were never confused and we never had to change things because it might be in his political interest you know he strikes me as an unusual person not necessarily in missouri but an unusual person generally speaking he's uh deeply religious and he seems to me to be a person who works his religion uses lives his religion in ways that other people who say i'm a christian really don't he is a deeply religious man and he did not wear that though on his show on the sleeves when we worked for him and we knew he was a minister but we never saw it and it was only years later that i saw that but he is just a good man now is there a point in your life and i want to take you back to school days where you think to yourself and maybe not articulate it in this way you say to yourself i'm a leader other people follow me other kids follow me is there a moment or a time or a place or an occasion where that strikes you no no not in grade school not in high school i was never a leader in that sense i didn't run for office i wasn't a vocal kid i was just like i am at the court i just quiet and i didn't ask any questions throughout my years in school on the i wouldn't be one that i would point out that led anybody to do anything well in college aren't you active in forming the black student group that was because i could type i had my type right at it like the woman who becomes the secretary yeah yeah that's why i became the secretary because i had a typewriter and i could type and i could edit well surely it had to be more than that well there must be some reason that people look to you for this i did you know the when i first arrived on campus the head of the black student union was a wonderful young man named arthur martin and he heard that i could type and i was a transfer student i hadn't been there the year before and so he brought over the proposed constitution and told me uh the changes they wanted to make and it was a hand written portions up and he said would you type it up and i said oh fine so i sat it by smith corona and typed it up and made the edits and that was it i mean i did i was reliable let's put it that way if you and this is something again that came from my grandfather he would send us off he said take the tractor and go back to feel and plow and he would go back and inspect later on you had to be reliable without supervision so i was reliable in that way but no i i would never you know my classmates to this day i was probably one of the least likely people uh to see leading anything i was just uh i just wasn't i didn't see myself that so there's never a time when you said i can lead people to do something i can i have the ability within myself to get others to to follow me and i don't mean follow you blindly but to follow you no never at all no i was more independent i was i would think things through and make my own decisions i probably wasn't a great follower either um if anything i was i would say i was just independent more like my grandfather that i would participate that i was a part of lots of things i was a part of the black student union i was a part of some other organizations i was a part of the school newspaper so i did all sorts of things but i would not have pegged me the only thing i could say about the leadership part of it was that i thought for myself i like to think things through and i love the idea of talking and persuading i think we've kind of gotten away from that in the society no but that's a little bit of what i mean yeah talking and persuading so here's you have an idea and a way of thinking and here's another fellow or classmate or student who thinks differently or doesn't think quite the same way and you can convince that person there's not some aspect or you can try yeah isn't that some aspect of leadership well if you define it that way yes i love that though yeah i think that's a part of being educated i think that is a part of the discipline of education i think it is the most wonderful thing i mean to open up the mind and to really think that look you don't have to agree with me but let's let's talk about this let's let's talk about whether it's philosophy or history or art let's just talk about it or it could be politics it could be the constitution because what the way we've kind of gotten now is that we it's almost like we have it's become a religious thing that we there's a religiosity to this sort of the opinions that we have that then it was like you could go i remember in law school we would go over and then be a dollar a pitcher beer it was back in the days when i enjoyed beer and we'd talk and the ideas were free-flowing i found those to be wonderful like the old coffee shops you know so if you define it as willing to exchange and debate ideas then yeah if that's a part of leadership and do you think or i was about to say don't you think that people said oh clarence thomas uh thinks this way about that he's interesting you need to talk to him about this that you know it's interesting the i think they didn't say that politely and they didn't call me clarence then but the uh the they said go talk to him because he's got some ideas but okay i was interested in everything you know if someone had a good argument right i was interested in looking at that argument and just take the time i think that's fascinating and and it's a fascinating part about meeting people because they they might come from a different part of the country they have a different sort of education they think a different way and it made education exciting and and i think when someone comes in and they already have all the answers that's a boring person right because now they're just sort of preaching to you whereas i was more interested in just processing it all and thinking it through so yeah i think there would be times people wouldn't say that generously he has some good ideas but they'd say well he thinks differently you might go you might want to go over and say something i bet some people said it when you get to the eoc you're you're leading an agency of 3000 people and clearly just by nature of the job you're a leader did you think of yourself in that way there may i i know you're a modest guy no but uh realistic didn't you think that i'm in charge of this i run this well it's like actually it started department of education in 1981 about this time in 1981 and all of a sudden you show up you're in your um i was about 32 years old and there are about eight 900 people in this organization there's some contentiousness and i said oh my goodness what am i going to do now uh so you're sort of selected and you're put in charge and again it is sink or swim and then i go to eeoc within a year less than a year and it's really it's a spread out organization with any number of problems and now you must lead and what you borrow from are the people that you respect i mean i respected and admired what's in the way senator danforth did things so i didn't have these sort of litmus tests about people i didn't put people in boxes on you allow people to do their jobs and after you there were some people that didn't perform and you dealt with them as individuals but you didn't put people in boxes so yes that was a point when you were thrust into a leadership position and you are required when you are in these positions to do the job the best you can and you must become a leader seems to be the two steps here one is you you said you're selected and you're selective for some reason because people say he can do it he can do the job and then you have the job and you have to demonstrate that you can do the job so you won't just pick willy nilly somebody said oh get that guy i mean you just pick willy nilly somebody saw on you yeah that some quality of leadership yeah i don't know i you know i'd the i'd like to think so but i just don't know i've been around washington long enough not to be presumptuous enough enough to think that somebody saw something particular about me nobody's going to say give him that job he'll mess it up nobody's saying that well i think it's you know maybe i don't know but the once i'm there um on the i then i think you're obligated to perform my view is very simple about these jobs that is that you are required to when you're put in a position to do the job as best you can and a part of leading is leading by example so if you expect other people to put the hours in you put the hours in if you expect other people to be fair to each other you have to be fair if you expect other people to be disciplined in decision making you have to be disciplined in decision making i had a rule for example just a simple rule one of the hardest things to do in these jobs is to terminate people you can ask any executive to bring a person and terminate people over the years whether i was at monsanto or at the department of education on the hill wherever i was it always bothered me when someone had to work themselves into a frenzy to terminate a person to imagine that they're angry with the person almost like a pep talk before a football game or something i always thought that you had to do what you had to do and you could do it in as pleasant a manner as you possibly could leaving that person some measure of dignity and that's a simple thing but i always thought it was very very important but yeah yes i was put in these positions and once in those positions i think you had to learn how to lead or you should just simply leave let me ask you what you see as the difference between vision philosophy and style how do these interact for you vision philosophy style wow how would you define vision how would you define vision you know i guess for me i'm not that creative i had to say let's just take eelc when i was leading there i had the sense that an organization should no matter where it was going some people might have different policies but the machinery of it should work that processes should work that you get in your car and you might decide that you want to drive over to northwest but you want it to work to get to northwest i might decide i want to go to northeast now we may go different directions but in both cases our expectation is that the machinery of our vehicle works that's what i thought about eeoc first of all let's just make it work and so my view was to have an organization that worked and that the people who were the integral to it it was not me i was a political appointee the people who were integral were the career people so wherever i was wherever whatever i was doing the career people had to buy into it it was their organization they it was their careers there they'd grown some of them had some of them had grown up there etc so if there was a vision it was more that and also to make sure we had tens of thousands of cases coming through there how do we process these now there's going to be a tiny fraction that we disagree about but the overwhelming bulk of it we all agree on these people need to have their rights vindicated and of course there are glitches along the way but if there was a vision it was to have the machinery work to have it work consistent with the statute and to have the people who were there as career people to be the major players in that okay and then philosophy you know i don't know if i had a management philosophy other than that a job worth doing is worth doing well uh and that everyone should be treated fairly i was not one of these people i'm not real tolerant of people who don't do their work i'm not going to tell you i'm not going to sit here and tell you that i'm not tolerant of me not doing my work and my view is more like my grandfather's you are here to do a job and you do it if you're not going to do it you're not going to be here on the other hand if you do your job and do it well i am your best friend so my best managers always had incomes that exceeded mine and i always i would send them off to harvard or to enhance their careers in different ways i also had these wonderful programs when you when you run a fairly decent-sized organization you have some latitude you'd put say women or minorities in in programs that would enhance their careers and these weren't like saying uh giving preferences it was getting that pool ready expanding it to move into upper management whether it was at eeoc or other agencies and the good news about that is that in the long run it actually worked that they went off and they did other things and and people were taking them away from us so uh i felt that you had to my philosophy was i treated people the way i wanted to be treated and i treated the organization in a way that i would want a manager to treat an organization of mine if i had one and what about style my style is pretty much low keyed i'm a meat and potatoes guy i don't mean that dietary wise i'd be bloated if i did that but the i just i'm straightforward you know some people tend to be flamboyant uh i'm not that kind of person and i don't pretend to be that kind of person what you see is what you get uh i'm going to tell you exactly what i think i'm not going to play games with you and i do believe that it is critical as a manager for credibility for the organization for yourself to level with people that if they're if you want to be positive yet you tell them in a measured way exactly what you think in a positive way if you have to bring unpleasant news there is a is a decent way to do it without destroying another human being the other thing that you know we had a very we had the most diverse population wise and organization probably in the government so one of the things that you have to be clear about is that we start on a very human level we are dealing with human beings everybody's a human being here i don't pigeonhole people you don't treat blacks a certain way hispanics another way mixed race another way native americans another way people who are disabled people with disabilities another way you don't do that a human being is a human being is a human being and what i found yes people have particular problems because of certain attributes but that doesn't identify them they are human beings and i found that worked far better than putting people in different pigeonholes and then treating them accordingly now some people categorize the making of leaders in three ways a great people cause great events b movements make leaders or c the confluence of unpredictable events creates leaders appropriate for the times does one of these fit you we've established your leader oh i don't know i i think i just have to take that as uh we'll assume that i am but i you know i think that at times things are demanded of you and you can either say no and you think about your life if there were things that were demanded of you at a certain time the i remember when and i relate this in my re relate this in my book when i got here i spoke with justice marshall and i said boy you know i'm sitting here talking to justice marshall and i'm like a kid you know wow two and a half hours later and it's what was supposed to be a ten minute meeting you know during that two and a half hours he said i said to him that if i had had the courage when he was going around the south arguing these separate but equal cases and eventually leading up to brown that i wish i could have been there with him but i don't know if i would have had the courage and he just sort of leaned up in his desk and he just said i had to do in my time what i had to do and you have to do in your time what you have to do and i think it might come down to that that for leaders that we're called on to do certain things at a certain time and the i do see it as a calling more than ambition or anything else and i can't say it's planned i don't know which of those definitions fit i think that they all might be right to a certain extent i think it might be an uncertain calculus that leads us where we are do you see your legitimacy as a leader grounded in your ability to persuade people to follow your vision or in your ability to articulate the agenda of a movement well for us it's different here at the court when i was at eeoc it was leading people in a direction right and and one of the most gratifying things was when i was leaving eeoc to have people who were somewhat reluctant and reticent when i arrived to be so supportive and to just endearing and loving because we had gone in the right direction and whether no one else knew it they knew it and that's all that mattered now up here this is different this is more monastic it's quiet it's just like this room we work alone we have law clerks i work at home it's more contemplative uh that is different than you just think of this one of the greatest opinions in in my that i think in the u.s reports is the descent and plessy versus fergus quiet alone but it stood there all this time like a monument to what is right and then one day what it changes right everything changes so leadership becomes more like what my grandfather becomes a pillar a rock you think it through you make sure it's right and you leave it there and maybe one day it'll become a touchstone for some movement as say the dissent and plessy became but don't you believe that in in plessy in that descent and in your work today that part of what you do here is to try to convince your colleagues that what you think is the correct way to go as opposed to what they may think of something different that you try to achieve through this collegial conversations that you have and through the writings of your opinions that they should join you they should sign on with you i mean there has to be a lot of that going on here it it happens in specific cases and it also happens over a common tenure that we have the what's justice white said when i got here that what matters now is what happens what you do here this is sort of this is an intramural institution in that sense the members of the court in a sort of professional way live with each other it's a family there's a sense of knowledge of each other and intimacy with each other that is unusual in organizations we're not fighting for a promotion or the corner office or anything it's all about the work so the relationships do matter and up here one of the things that really matters is your credibility with your colleagues your honesty with them how you treat them how they respect you and you respect them and i remember i got a note once from one of my colleagues um that i'm not going to give the name but it's not justice scalia on saying that your wonderful colleague i understood what that meant and that might the feelings were mutual and we don't often agree um but it has to do with respecting it's called mutual respect i respect my colleagues right to disagree with me at any time and they in turn respect mine and you earn that from them so it's the credibility that then becomes the engine to be able to persuade them because they know that you're not playing games you're not twisting or shading that it is about the integrity of the body of your work and your thinking that's important and there are times again it's purely intramural when that changes minds when they they know they can read what you have written and they know that that's precisely what you think there's no ulterior motive no distant agenda that's about these cases so yes it does matter but i don't think it's like a tactical writing of an opinion it's a body of work in a body of uh the way you conduct yourself up here a case comes before the court and involves some issue that you feel strongly on and you want to take x approach and you find that your colleague why wants to take the other approach and there has to be some back and forth between you where he's trying to bring you to his side or her side and you're trying to bring them to yours that that must occur well and not probably as much as you think we've been here a long time right but but i'm not going to say i if i were here and i'll never be here i'm not going to say claire's thomas won't go for this i'm going to say i can bring clarence thomas over here you could bring i could bring you along a little and you could bring me right they'll be some common ground and but at some point if you have an approach that's fundamentally different from my approach right we're not going to coincide if you decide to drive northeast and i'd drive decide to drive northwest we're both driving north but we're not driving together toward each other so i mean the but you learn how to live with that but what happens over time is that sometimes we see well maybe you have a point not in a specific case but over a body of cases and you tug each other a little so we're sort of not necessarily heading in the same direction but we're heading closer uh in a closer direction does that make sense to you yes and the but i think what's crucial up here is there are no gimmicks there's no marketing there's no self-promotion we know each other we sit in the conferences we hear each other we look at the drafts we talk to each other and so it always you put all your cards on the table face up for example if i'm drafting an opinion and i send that that draft goes around to all eight of the other members of the court it doesn't just go to one or two if i disagree about something the way it happens is that i write a letter for example dear ruth that's to justice ginsburg i don't agree with your reasoning in this opinion for these reasons okay and justice white used to end his opinion his letters by saying cheers byron you know but it's always warm friendly cordial like that and then she might say i'll make some injustice adjustments to accommodate your point of view but so it's all constant back and forth and over that time over time we've been together now 15 years so over that time we have to learn how to respect and work with each other and in their individual ways each of these your colleagues is exhibiting some kind of leadership trying to steer these maybe these parallel courses to become closer and closer and you and all of them engage in this i would guess fairly routinely every day in every case but see what's the thing that's really interesting up here and this goes back to the the process of education to the truth-seeking effort the the it's really hard you know i've often said this job is only easy for people who already have the answer before they start or for people who only have one point of view or no authority to make any decision for the rest of us it's really hard because what you're trying to do is to find the right answer that is not right just because you feel that's right it's not your just your personal opinion that's easy the hard part is what is the right answer under this document or this statute and the that's a little harder and i think my colleagues that justice powell said when when i first arrived here he said that when you reach a point when you think you belong here it's time for you to leave so the process counsels some humility that it is a lot harder than looking at a bottom line and saying i agree or disagree as in your years here um and i know you probably don't like to talk about individual cases but has your search for truth in a case taking you to a place that surprised you yes in many cases the it takes me in places that are not necessarily consistent with my personal opinions as as a reaction to things what i do with my clerks you saw one young man coming here a minute ago he's one of my current clerks i tell them up front what my initial reaction is what my instincts what my feelings are and tell them to watch me the way we watch my grandmother grandfather when that lady came up you watch me and you make sure that i do not put that in that opinion do not allow me to do that and the the there's a discipline just like he had to have a discipline i have to have a discipline because the interesting things that the these opinions have a long life shelf life and the the just like plessy had a long and unfortunate shelf life and the that opinion did not have to be written that way and it could have been written in the right way so easily yeah so the but at any rate the uh the i try to not allow my personal views to drift into the opinions except in the appropriate way with respect to jurisprudence do you have a general philosophy that guides you through life and if you do how has it sustained you through moments of challenge or moments of alienation a general philosophy um i think that you know i'm religious even when i thought i wasn't religious i was religious and faith has been just a central part it's what's allowed me to to survive in lots of ways i mean even in my memoirs i mentioned whenever there were slights i went to the chapel and over the years i've even when i wasn't going to church i would make visitations the as far as the way i deal with other people i believe very strongly that you do unto others as you have them do unto you and that i treat people the way i want to be treated i don't care who it is a person could be picking up trash or arguing before the court or whatever i think that these that people deserve the same respect that i think i would deserve if i were in that position so beyond that i mean there are other things that are that i could get into but i did those are central to me how does race consciousness affect your work do you see yourself as a leader who advances issues of race or issues of society or both and is there a distinction is there such a thing as a race transcending leader wow that's really interesting let's just take the late the transcendence all right transcending i think that there are some things that are common to us all and when i found myself in the seminary as the only black kid in savannah in the late 60s that i had to find things that we all had in common and obviously we knew we could look at me and see that i was different but that's been true throughout my life my grandfathers used to say when people were quick to to dismiss somebody you know they just tell you well you can find good in everybody there are exceptions to that rule but you could find good in everybody or as lincoln has said to have said that i don't like that fellow that means i have to get to know him i think you can find something that we all have in common you asked me a few minutes ago about management style at eeoc i looked and every person i came in contact with what do we have in common and we worked from there we established that foundation now with respect to race consciousness there is we're race conscious we're race conscious society we look at each other in different ways we segment the population we fragment the population and then of course as a member of my of our race there's been a treatment you know i've um i went back recently and found the plantation that i'm from and it was there it's just a few miles from where we farmed not even a few miles but i'd never been allowed to go on it and it was a little eerie so that's a history that's obvious that's there now how do you deal with that you can deal with that by focusing exclusively on that and put yourself right back to where you came from limit yourself how do you get broader than that and the i like to start as i said by thinking about what we and focusing on what we have in common what transcends race recognizing that race will always be a conscious part of the way we live following that do you have a different leadership style when you deal with groups that are all black mixed race or all white no but the same with with groups of falling into each category i mean you if i'm an if i went to when i was at eelc i had my standard civil rights eeo speeched and i remember getting up at a conference in hawaii and looking out and said oh my goodness this is a totally different population than my standard speech addresses you know you had hawaiians you had japanese you had samoans etc i said this is really the speech doesn't match the audience so obviously there's some tailoring that you do but i think there's a core message that is the same and i stay consistent the even with my law clerks i don't change you know for law clerks black or female or you know asian i just you know they're they're human beings and i try to deal with people on that level in a book called challenging the civil rights establishment the authors quote william allen he writes of a danger in continually quote thinking in terms of race or gender until we learn once again to use the language of american freedom in an appropriate way that embraces all of us we're going to continue to harm this country is there a danger of further divisiveness when we focus on the concept of black leadership oh i don't know that might be going i know bill allen and i think he was probably thinking in much more global or higher level than than the specificity required for say black leadership i think that's more builds a very erudite and brilliant political theorist and philosopher but i think that you have to recognize that there are race-specific problems and there are specific problems to say native americans or whites or elderly people but i think that we can fragment ourselves that way i mean if you look at the 14th amendment it doesn't break those groups i mean just just take the amendment that does the hard work in the area of race it gives us rights as citizens it speaks of persons and what we were arguing for is that we were actually being denied the fullness of the benefits of that amendment uh whether it's in brown or in any of the other cases and so the i think that the constitution gives us rights as citizens and we should make the argument or have the discussion on that level but you have to always recognize that there are specific problems for members of different groups i understand that but i think as a matter of constitutional rights it's on a higher plane do you feel that black leaders have an obligation to help other african-americans is there a point at which that obligation ends and one can pursue his or her own ambitions you know i first of all let me just say i haven't had those ambitions i know this sounds odd but my life has been one of just doing what i was supposed to do and doing the best job i could and the rest just happened but let's go to this point i think we are obligated to help people and certainly those who are less fortunate and i can be even more specific kids who look like me who come from my neighborhood i have a special affinity for it but my view is that i help anybody who is trying who is less fortunate you know we have this week on this wonderful organization that i've been a part of since i've been on the court horatio alger and it's underprivileged kids these kids have been abused these kids have come from difficult circumstances and it's a way to help kids who were who are in the circumstances i was in at their age and some a lot worse off so i think it's not just black it's not just women it's not just hispanic or mixed race it's everybody we are obligated to help others you've written about the destructiveness of slavery segregation talked about the damage done can the playing field be leveled by and if and can government level the playing field and can it do so without breeding the kind of dependency that you've also talked about boy that's the hard one and you know that's the one that has you pacing the floor at two in the morning and worrying about it and certainly when i was in a policy making role i always worried about that endlessly how far can you go without um your solution becoming as harmful as what you thought the problem was and my grandfather isn't that fascinating he used to go off in the woods early in the morning and come back later and he never had anything he didn't kill anything you know he was had his gun across his shoulder and he'd just come back and then he'd go and have breakfast and he said he was just thinking and these were the same problems he was thinking about how do you help without hurting but i do think i think we sometimes ask the wrong questions there's the there's a lot of harm that you know whether it's a broken family that it's uh crime it's uh habits it's um just negative influences that are devastating and i remember trying to talk quite a bit about this when i was at eeoc i don't talk as much about it now but i do think that when you create these headwinds that prevent people based on race from accomplishing things that government has to cease that that you have to rectify that you have to remedy that and we attempted to do it in specific areas when i was at eeoc i don't know how far you can go and how global you can make that without running into constitutional limitations and i also don't know how far you can go doing that without creating or causing additional harms give an example the i can remember when i was a department of education i write about this in the book that the effort when we were in the was to certainly desegregate the universities in the south but one of the count other efforts as a sort of corollary to that was to basically desegregate the black colleges and if not there was a sort of this subliminal or this implicit argument that they had to be eliminated like savannah state or uh not langston university for example the smaller ones and i thought why would you do that to rectify a problem further example of that is my high school st pius the 10th high school in savannah which turned out all these wonderful kids the first 98 99th percentiles i ever saw on the psats for example were there in an all black high school well that was closed in 1973 because of what the experts said in part the social situation that is it was all black to me the remedy became worse than first of all i saw nothing wrong with the school but that's sort of a an absurd application of a remedy but i don't know i don't know how far you go the constitution has very strict limits in my opinion on the use of race and sex categories it says citizenship and person and i think we have to be very careful that we're not locking in precedents that in the long run will do greater harm justice and i can't remember who said years ago if you want to get beyond race you have to go to race that was justice blackman okay yeah i don't know what that means um i think it means that you can't talk about remedies unless those to race unless those remedies have some race consciousness in them yeah i don't you know i've read that and read it and re-read it and i don't know i mean i said how do you get wet do you in order to be dry you must be wet i don't know that i don't understand it i don't know how you can have the that's just but at any rate well it's a great case which i know a little bit about paradise versus alabama state trooper uh case involving the exclusion of blacks from the state trooper ranks and the case went through several several rulings in which courts ordered alabama to do this and alabama just wouldn't do it every time and finally after i think three higher court decisions said to alabama you will hire one black state trooper for every white state imposed a quota which is anathema to many people so i think that's what it means that here's an instance where in order to get beyond race you had to go to race as a remedy well i think sometimes at the when you have a specific case you have a class action for example and i assume that was a class yes i think it was the remedy i mean the courts have imposed specific remedies to for that now you or i might disagree with the remedy but if somebody's foot dragging sometimes the remedy has to be very firm right and clear-cut now that's not global that's in this specific case right just this case yeah and it's just saying this because now let's say somebody they had been cooperative and gone on and done what they were supposed to do it might be that might that may have been inappropriate now i don't have the answers for all these cases i tend to be very reticent to having lived in a race conscious environment where we were actually excluded because of race to now say somehow i'm comfortable that counting by race now i think that that's i don't i think that that we can build into that constitution certain exclusions that will come back to harm us what do you see as your greatest contribution as an african-american leader oh remember you can't deny that you're a leader oh goodness i you know i don't think in those terms i really don't i just you know i think that when you are called upon to do a job you do it the best you can and then when it's over you go away and you just be grateful for the opportunity that you had a chance to do it that's it i don't look back and wonder about legacy or on whether or not how i'm going to be treated in books or anything like that i think that that's just thinking too highly of yourself i think it's about the job and the the the cases that you sit on that you try to just make sure you do it right that's it and you know my grandfather's i said to you that that when i went to seminary that he said boy don't shame me and don't shame the race and to just do your job just do it competently i don't do any more or any less i don't play games i don't do things to be flamboyant or draw attention i just do my job the proof of the pudding when all the talk about style and this and that's done when we're long gone the proof is in the u.s reports we don't have a clue what harlan's style was you or me what we do know about him is that dissent and plessy versus fergus now neither you nor i have any clue what the circumstances are going to be in this country 50 or 100 years from now we don't know which cases are going to jump out of those u.s reports and be the determinative case i live with the comfort that these principles have a much longer shelf life than these sort of quick flash in the pan sort of uh uh fads that come on whether it's jurisprudentially socially or otherwise or politically it is critical all i want to do is to do this job in a way that when i look at that bus to my grandfather overlooking me know that he would say it's a job well done that's it no more and so when you're writing an opinion are you conscious of those 50 years that have yet to come i'm conscious that this is going to be here a long time and i don't know to what use it will be put but that you might be that's a very good question by the way i tell my law clerks that we're not writing current events we're writing for a much longer period again look at plessy i'm not saying that anything that i have written rivals the dissent and plessy but i will say that these opinions have an enormously long shelf life so it is critical that they not be based on shifting sands of of fads and what's popular but rather principles that are locked down and that will be here when the tides turns the tides turn or the wind blows in a different direction 50 years from now to deal with that in his book race matters cornell west writes the crisis of leadership is a symptom of black distance from a vibrant tradition of resistance from a vital community bonded by ethical ideas and from a credible sense of political struggle do you see a crisis of leadership in black communities today and if you do what what makes this happen what contributes to it you know i don't know i just see leaders i mean if you look i mean my goodness we have a a gentleman with some you know his mixed race who's got a great chance to be president of the united states you've got maybe it's different i think the current governor of new york is black current governor of massachusetts we've had the governor of virginia you know um yeah there's there are problems but um you know you i think see i'm more optimistic um i think the problems are i mean they've just great they're heartbreaking yeah i mean i go back to savannah it just breaks my heart but it's been breaking my heart for most of my life you know that you can't persuade that you can't you can't even with people who are close to you just say look you know like my grandfather said the library is open now you can go and but i don't know i'm not going to condemn leadership i don't know that well i think that if you say that often enough the young kids who could be the leaders might not want to be or might feel that it's too steep a hill to climb but i see the young kids i see on these university campuses in the law schools i see them not feeling that there's a crisis they might there might be a gap or there might be not a great leader in this particular locale but i see another generation of leaders coming up and well trained and ready to go and so i don't know he might have a point that i'm missing but i don't feel that negative toward leadership what kind of leaders does contemporary society demand and how will future problems demand different leadership types i know we can't predict the future but what who do we need now what kinds of leaders do we need now and what kinds might we need in the future you know i sometimes think that and this is just my perception i have no particular want skill or certain knowledge to to even comment on it but my own personal concern sometimes is that people find out through polls or through fingers to the wind where people are going and then they jump in front of them and call them leaders call themselves leaders i don't think that's what a leader is i go back to my grandfather i think you've got to have some principles that you believe in that are important to you and in order to as you say persuade people i think you have certainly needs the ability to communicate to them but you know above all when it's not looking real good you need some courage you know i remember this wonderful quote that i won't get right but churchill when after he's his wilderness years and his political career is supposed to be over and he's going to be named prime minister he's going to buckingham palace and he's quoted as having said something to the effect that it was as though my whole life was but mere mere preparation for this moment um you know i i don't know i just you know i think that um the things that you do need in these jobs is courage i think you need to hold even when you're being tempted by praise you need to remain firm in principle when you're being beaten by criticism you need to be principled there are things when you were in liberty county you were not safe you know it and i know it what propelled you what was important to you why was it worth the risk what called on you to pull that courage up to go in a rural area where if you got isolated back up in those woods it was going to be difficult for you what is it that gave my grandfather the courage to strike out on his own i don't know or when he went to get his business license so i think there's something that was in you that said no matter what i'm going to stand up and i think that leadership perhaps first and foremost requires fortitude do you think for your grandfather and and others like him that that something was conviction the conviction that he stood for something that was right and just and therefore had a responsibility to demonstrate it to others i think so and i think it was even beyond that that i think right and just may cover it because right and just includes raising his boys right it includes showing how you can live as an independent black man and the segregated south showing how he as he used to say a motherless and fatherless child could survive yeah i think that it was worth it to him and for me and i borrow this from that movie saving private ryan uh where captain miller's after asking sergeant ryan right at the end of it when all these guys have died to save private right he asked him these words or told him earn it earn this and with my grandfather with what i've got to do and what i've got to do because of you and other people who risked it you got to earn it you know you do it not to in a sense that you are mimicking or you're being controlled or we agree but there is just like the library when you people fight for us to be in the library how do you earn it how do you say to them thank you do you go and say thank you or do you go to the library and use it and so in a sense that it was for him that that he was doing the right thing and for us that we earned the right to benefit from the right thing are the values that you talk about teachable we know that they're teachable on an individual basis your grandfather to you and your brother but are they teachable on a larger basis in a classroom to older children to can you transmit this i you know i've traveled all over this country and i've been in all sorts of environments and some pretty depressed and i think that when kids look you in the eye and you sit down and you talk with them and you explain to them you don't have an agenda you just care about them they can sense it you know i remember sitting in a room with on black law students at the university of uh georgia and after a couple of hours of just talking they understand that what you're saying but see what we you almost have to cut through or peel away are the layers of negativism and cynicism and mistrust and and calumnies that's the unfortunate part but as soon as you connect on a sincere level and you tell them this is not about you agreeing with me this isn't about you having a particular point of view this is about you thinking about your lives and the fact that now the mere fact that you're in law school you're the leaders you're it they do get it do you go to these little schools my little kids i see them all over the place they believe they want to believe but you got to give them something to believe you know i quote a janitor just across the street when i was in the senate one morning when i was coming in all down in the mouth and depres despondent and he said made it clear to me you cannot give what you do not have so you go to these kids and you don't have anything constructive you have nothing positive you're worried about your own sort of self-interest they sense it you got to have it to give it to them and the bottom line answer is yes you can influence them will you influence 100 no but you can influence the 20 to 30 percent to 50 the kids who will be the leaders and you can have do it by example of course but you can also do it by showing them how much you care about them and how sincere you are about your ideas and the fact that you are not requiring them to agree with you on the bottom line but to be independent and have their own thoughts justice thomas thank you for being with us thank you

Channel: University of Virginia

Views: 1,818,015

Rating: 4.5394158 out of 5

Keywords: Julian Bond, Clarence Thomas, United, States, Supreme, Court, associate, justice, African, American, history, leadership, education, academic, scholarship, law, legal, U.Va., UVA, University, of, Virginia

Id: gfAZUYCZSLQ

Length: 92min 43sec (5563 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 16 2009