Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas became visibly emotional during a public conversation as he reflected on the grandparents who raised him and the promise he made after their deaths more than four decades ago.
Thomas was speaking with Hoover Institution fellow Peter Robinson when he described how the deaths of both grandparents in 1983 changed the way he approached the rest of his life.
“When both my grandparents died suddenly in 1983, the decision I made was to live the rest of my life as a memorial to theirs,” Thomas said.
The justice briefly struggled to continue as he became emotional.
Thomas then connected that promise to the influence of economist and author Thomas Sowell, whose work he said reinforced many of the same principles his grandparents had instilled in him.
“And the point I’m going to make is that is the way I feel about Professor Sowell,” Thomas said.
Thomas was raised by his maternal grandparents in segregated Savannah, Georgia, after his father left when he was seven years old.
His grandfather, Myers Anderson, had been raised by a freed slave, and Thomas recalled that the family later worked land that had once been part of a plantation.
“We actually lived — farmed on a part of that plantation, and we grew up every summer, we farmed on that plantation,” Thomas said.
Thomas said his grandfather had only nine months of formal education, while his grandmother, Christine Anderson, had attended school through the sixth grade.
Despite their limited schooling, Thomas said education remained central in their household.
“Even though my grandfather only had nine months of education, the crown jewel was education,” Thomas said.
He described his grandmother as a “saintly woman” and called his grandfather “the single greatest man I’ve ever known.”
Thomas said his grandfather emphasized discipline, hard work and personal responsibility rather than focusing on what the family lacked.
“It wasn’t taking the measure of what you don’t have,” Thomas said. “It wasn’t to complain about that, but to develop the capacity to do things that you needed to do in order to… improve your life.”
Thomas also recalled one of his grandfather’s favorite sayings whenever the future justice complained that something was impossible.
“His favorite saying was, ‘Old man can’t is dead. I helped bury him,’” Thomas said.
“And the old man can’t was buried many times in our house.”
Thomas said his grandfather’s own life made it difficult for him to justify complaining about obstacles.
“My grandfather, no education, raised by a freed slave, and he never complained,” Thomas said. “He did it.”
“He was just a great man,” Thomas added. “Now what do you do? How do you complain when he had nothing, no education?”
Thomas said those lessons later resurfaced when he began reading Sowell, according to the Conservative Brief.
He specifically pointed to Sowell’s “Race and Economics” and its emphasis on self-reliance and self-discipline.
“Where did I first hear that?” Thomas asked. “I heard it from my grandfather, the single greatest man I’ve ever known, my grandmother, a saintly woman, my nuns.”
“Same thing,” Thomas said. “It’s the exact same thing.”
The emotional moment offered a rare personal glimpse of Thomas, who has spent decades on the Supreme Court but has often maintained a reserved public profile.
