while they have lived an entire life of preference,” he said.
Then, to leave no doubt that he was cut from the same cloth that produced race men and women like William Monroe Trotter and Ida B. Wells, Powell said emphatically,“ I believe in affirmative action.”
Powell’ s words were a strong affirmation of his Blackness – of his willingness to speak out in support of remedies for America’ s continuing race problem.
In December 1980, a small group of Black conservatives gathered at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. They were in a celebratory mood. The GOP had just snatched the presidency away from Democrats and these Black Republicans were chomping at the bit to turn their beliefs about what was needed to fix the nation’ s race problems.
Organized by Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at Stanford University’ s Hoover Institution, a conservative, public policy think tank, the twoday meeting was attended by a little more than 100 people. Among them were some of the nation’ s leading Black conservatives; people like Sowell, Glenn Loury, Walter Williams, Clarence Pendleton, Robert Woodson and Gloria Toote.
Also in attendance was 32-year-old Clarence Thomas.
A little-known aide to Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo., Thomas quickly got everyone’ s attention when he stood up to speak about the problems of Black education and descended into an attack on his
Gen. Colin Powell
sister. Juan Williams, a columnist with The Washington Post, had gone to the conference to hear what this gathering of Black conservatives had to say in the wake of Reagan’ s landslide victory. But the column he wrote about that meeting turned out to be a window into the mind of the 32-year-old Black man who hijacked the conference’ s spotlight.
Thomas held out his sister as an example of what was wrong with the nation’ s welfare system.“ She gets mad when the mailman is late with her welfare check. That is how dependent she is. What’ s worse is that now her kids feel entitled to the check, too. They have no motivation for doing better or getting out of that situation,” Thomas said, according to Williams’ December 16, 1980, column.
“ You’ ve heard about Clarence Thomas, but not by name,” were the opening words of the Williams’ column.“ He is one of the Black people now on center stage in American politics: he is a Republican, a long-time supporter of Ronald Reagan, opposed to the minimum wage, rent control, busing and affirmative action.”
That introduction put Clarence Thomas on Ronald Reagan’ s radar.
On May 1, 1981 – three months after he was sworn-in as president – Reagan nominated Thomas to be the Department of Education’ s assistant secretary for civil rights. A year later, in an even more cynical move, Reagan picked Thomas to head the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Ultimately, Thomas, a staunch opponent of affirmative action, would be hoisted onto the Supreme Court by Republican President George H. W. Bush. With less than two years of judicial experience, Bush said Thomas was the best qualified person to replace retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall, the high court’ s first Black justice.
History would prove Bush wrong.
People began filing into Denver’ s Mile High Stadium hours before the history-making event was scheduled to take place. What was about to happen was a quintessential moment – one that this nation’ s Founding Fathers could not have imagined.
At first it was a trickle. But soon the ramps and tunnels into the stadium filled with a rush of people of all races and ethnicities. They were Black and White, Hispanic and Asian. Some Native Americans came in their traditional garb, clothes their ancestors may have worn more than a century ago when the words“ manifest destiny” were used to justify the seizure of their land by the descendants of the men who wrote that“ All men are created equal.”
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