Pricey Colleagues,
Final Friday, President Trump issued a Presidential Proclamation recognizing February 2025 as Nationwide Black Historical past Month, and “name[ed] upon public officers … and all of the folks of america to watch this month with applicable applications, ceremonies, and actions.” In his Proclamation, President Trump appropriately famous that “black Individuals have been amongst our nation’s most consequential leaders, shaping the cultural and political future of our Nation in profound methods,” and recognized as “Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Thomas Sowell, and Justice Clarence Thomas” as “American heroes.”
President Trump is true. Justice Thomas is an American hero. He’s crucial decide of the final 100 years. He is an effective and honorable man, and my pal. As a result of the President has known as upon us to rejoice the achievements of women and men like Justice Thomas throughout Black Historical past Month, I need to take this event to share somewhat about him.
I encourage anybody who desires to study Justice Thomas’s unbelievable journey to observe the stirring 2020 documentary Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Personal Phrases. Descended from West African slaves, Justice Thomas grew up in punishing poverty. He additionally grew up beneath a authorities that denied black residents equality beneath the legislation. He couldn’t stroll by way of sure public parks, enter sure public libraries, or attend sure public colleges due to the colour of his pores and skin. Justice Thomas thus would have extra trigger than most to stage grievances and maintain grudges in opposition to America.
However he did the alternative. He believed within the guarantees of America’s founding, and he climbed to the very best heights of American authorities and society. One of many issues that makes Individuals distinct from the remainder of the world is our perception that our previous is just not essentially our future. With exhausting work, dedication, and expertise, any American can overcome the hardships of the previous and obtain greatness. Justice Thomas is the residing embodiment of that American spirit.
He has overcome greater than only a tough upbringing. His views on the legislation—which he as soon as articulated in lone dissents however which now command a majority of the Court docket—had been pilloried by American elites for years. He was, and is, the goal of slurs and calumnies from progressive opponents. Many of those assaults have been explicitly racist. However he’s uncowed. The identical indominable spirit with which he overcame Jim Crow empowered Justice Thomas to reject elite naysayers and chart his personal path within the legislation—a path that the Supreme Court docket now follows.
After all, he didn’t do that alone. Justice Thomas’s household helped push him to those heights. Justice Thomas’s grandfather, Myers Anderson, a hardworking small-business proprietor in Savannah, spurred Justice Thomas to excellence. His spouse Ginni is an American patriot who has bravely and unapologetically supported her husband all through his public profession, even when his opponents resorted to surprising lies and smears. And Justice Thomas has lengthy recognized his deep Catholic religion as a supply of energy and braveness.
I clerked for Justice Thomas. I got here to know him as not only a nice man, but in addition and respectable individual. He loves his legislation clerks like members of his household. And he is aware of and cares concerning the varieties of those who the typical DC titan would move proper by—custodians, assistants, tour guides, and cops. He remembers their birthdays, their youngsters, and their well being struggles.
I can consider no higher abstract of Justice Thomas’s greatness, and no higher protection of America’s promise, than the closing traces of his concurrence in College students for Truthful Admission v. Harvard, through which the Supreme Court docket adopted Justice Thomas’s long-held view that race-conscious admissions insurance policies violate the Structure’s promise of colorblind equality:
“Whereas I’m painfully conscious of the social and financial ravages which have befallen my race and all that suffer discrimination, I maintain out enduring hope that this nation will dwell as much as its rules so clearly enunciated within the Declaration of Independence and the Structure of america: that each one males are created equal, are equal residents, and have to be handled equally earlier than the legislation.”
I want you all a contented Black Historical past Month.
Andrew N. Ferguson
Chairman
United States Federal Commerce Fee