Tuesday, October 23, 2007

It's been 16 years since Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' contentious confirmation hearing. Why dredge it up now?

Because he has.

Thomas has just published a memoir, "My Grandfather's Son," and has not been shy about spreading the word. You may have seen Thomas' interview on "60 Minutes," read his Q&A in Newsweek or Jet magazines or heard him on Rush Limbaugh's radio show.

Though the book recounts a hardscrabble life and tells an overcoming-the-odds tale that ends in triumph — a seat on the nation's highest court — it's clear Thomas has not moved past the bitter fight that put him there.

What you might not have heard is the voice of a Charlotte-area woman who, though she was never called as a witness and is not in the book, was a part of the circus-like scene in 1991.

"The hearings took on a life of their own," says Angela Shannon.

"Neither Anita Hill nor Clarence Thomas should have been subjected to that."

Reading "My Grandfather's Son" has made Shannon place its author and his role on the Supreme Court in the context of his harsh upbringing. It has also reminded her of the price women paid for placing sexual harassment at the center of a national debate.

In October 1991, Hill testified at the Senate confirmation hearings that Thomas had sexually harassed her when she worked for him at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Thomas called the proceedings a "high-tech lynching" and was confirmed in a close 52-48 vote. Their testimony riveted the country. Thomas calls Hill's charges "preposterous." Hill stands by her testimony.

Shannon worked for Clarence Thomas at the EEOC, when she was Angela Wright and a Republican. (She's now a registered Independent.) He gave her a reference before she came to work at the Observer, calling her an "excellent employee" who worked "very well under stress."

Shannon was fired by Thomas at EEOC, she said, because a commissioner wanted her position for the commissioner's son. Thomas said — at the time of the hearings — that he had fired her because he had heard she called a colleague "faggot."

"I don't use the word. I've never used the word," Shannon says.

She had never met Anita Hill, but found the law professor's story familiar.

She remembered that when she worked at EEOC in the mid-1980s, Thomas had made inappropriate comments about her body, had pressured her to date him, and had arrived at her Washington home uninvited.

Though a subpoenaed Shannon was never called to testify, she did give a sworn statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

She worked for me in the 1990s when she was the fashion writer for the Observer and I was features editor. I attended her 1995 wedding, when she took her husband's last name. She told me then that she was ready for the change.

As Angela Wright, she was harassed, she says, followed in the grocery store and confronted on the plane that took her to Washington in 1991.

Today, she's director of internal communications for Mecklenburg County, working with public relations and planning special events. "I love my job," she says. Shannon also does some acting (she appears in "The Mecklenburgers," a county-financed TV show). When we spoke, she had just returned from a film audition.

"I was surprised to see it had been 16 years," she says. She read the book reluctantly, before an NPR interview, the only other one she's given since it was published.

For the first time in years, Shannon says she uncovered memories. "I have a box — a huge storage box — full of stuff accumulated at the time of the hearings." When she looked through the nasty letters, the supportive notes, the news clippings, what stood out most were "the letters from desperate women asking, 'Where were you? We needed you. Anita Hill needed you.'"

"I didn't realize how many women were waiting to be vindicated by these hearings," women who had been harassed, who looked at the hearings as "righting the wrongs that had been done to them."

"Those letters made me sad about the outcome," Shannon says. "I wished I had been called. I wished it then."

Some good came out of it, she believes. It made women talk about something they didn't like to talk about.

The next big battle waged will be "for the respect and empowerment of black women," she predicts, citing the insults of everyone from Don Imus to black comedians and rappers.

It would have been a different outcome if the women who complained about Thomas had not been black, Shannon believes.

When Shannon read "My Grandfather's Son," it made her "feel very sad for that child named Clarence Thomas," whose father left, whose mother delivered him to an emotionally cold grandfather.

In the book, Thomas talks about struggles with alcohol, about earning a Yale Law degree he deemed worthless because it "bore the taint of racial preference."

"I started to understand the man I had met," Shannon says, a man she describes as "mean-spirited," a man who "didn't have a great deal of self-worth."

Shannon says, "I know, he knows, the people close to him know" what really happened in his dealings with the women who worked for him.

Hill's experiences closely paralleled her own with Thomas, she says.

Books and independent reporting have supported what she and Hill have said about Thomas.

The child who yearned for acknowledgment from his father and suffered deprivation in "My Grandfather's Son" is now a justice who dissents from Supreme Court rulings against executing the mentally retarded and beating and chaining up prisoners.

Shannon said the book gives her a fuller picture of Thomas, yet she still thinks he should "do the honorable thing and retire from the court, just free himself and move out and enjoy himself." She realizes that those who believe him might not think that's the noble choice.

The Observer contacted the Supreme Court public information office, and was told Thomas probably would have no comment. He didn't respond.

What would Shannon say to Thomas?

"I would like for him to know that I forgive him, I forgive him everything he said about me, everything that he did to me."

"I congratulate him on his book. It's a good first start. I would encourage him to continue on that path, to continue to examine his upbringing and confront his demons."

Shannon says she has found inspiration in Rick Warren's "The Purpose Driven Life." "There are no mistakes in my life. God wants to use your pain."

She finds joy in caring for her 41-year-old sister, who is deaf and developmentally disabled. "I love the fact that I'm here with the family around me."

Angela Shannon and Clarence Thomas will always tell different stories.

Whether you believe him or her will depend on your philosophy, your politics and your gut, I suspect.

With "My Grandfather's Son," Thomas has finally had his say.

And now, Angela Wright Shannon has had hers.