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Why did Anita Hill testify against Clarence Thomas?
Did Clarence Thomas engage in sexual misconduct?
How did Anita Hill change the conversation about sexual harassment?
Did Hill's allegations affect Thomas' confirmation hearings?
Oct 20, 2010 · With a brief voicemail message, the wife of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas has revived the scandalous allegations from 19 years ago that Thomas had sexually harassed former...
Anita Hill, who had worked with Thomas at the Department of Education and at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, eventually publicly accused him. Here's a look back at how it all...
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The uncomfortable spectacle of the hearings reverberated across the nation and had lasting consequences.
In October 1991, Americans were riveted by the spectacle of an all-white, all-male Senate Judiciary Committee questioning Anita Hill, the African-American law professor who had accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment.
TV viewers, both male and female, watched in increasing discomfort as the senators asked Hill about large-breasted women, a porn star named Long Dong Silver and pubic hair on a Coke can, among other previously unthinkable subjects for a Senate committee hearing.
But for women, Hill’s testimony would have special significance, as it was the first time someone had so publicly shared her account of workplace harassment—something that so many of them had experienced.
Though the committee would eventually confirm Thomas, making him only the second Black man to serve on the Supreme Court, the impact of Hill’s televised testimony would reverberate dramatically across the nation, with lasting consequences that endure today.
“I think women saw play out, in the most human terms, Anita Hill—credible and very much reflecting the experiences of so many other women—being demeaned, being dismissed and being mistreated by an array of male senators,” says Marcia Greenberger, founder and co-president emerita of the National Women’s Law Center. “And when they reflected upon it at the end of the hearings, their anger began to rise, and their determination to do something about it began to increase.”
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Sep 19, 2018 · CNN — As Christine Blasey Ford’s lawyers insist the FBI investigate her allegation of sexual and physical assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, here is a look back at how the FBI...
- 3 min
Apr 23, 2018 · A University of Oklahoma law professor and former assistant of Thomas’ during his tenure in the EEOC, Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment. Thomas, she claimed, had made unwanted sexual...
Sep 27, 2021 · When Anita Hill accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of unwanted advances and lewd comments when she worked for him, she says it changed "just about every aspect" of her life.