Clarence Thomas Becomes Emotional as He Honors the Grandparents Who Shaped His Life

Clarence Thomas Becomes Emotional as He Honors the Grandparents Who Shaped His Life

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas became visibly emotional during a wide-ranging public conversation as he reflected on the people and ideas that formed the foundation of his life. For several seconds the normally reserved justice struggled to continue, explaining why the subject remains deeply personal more than four decades later.

Thomas choked up while describing the decision he made after his grandparents died suddenly in 1983. “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,” he told Hoover Institution fellow Peter Robinson during an on-stage discussion. The conversation briefly paused as Thomas gathered himself.

He then connected that lifelong commitment to the influence of economist and author Thomas Sowell. “And the point I’m going to make is that is the way I feel about Professor Sowell,” Thomas continued. Robinson gently responded, “All right. Watch this because I’m going to lighten the mood here.”

Thomas’s emotional remarks came as he discussed Sowell’s impact on his thinking and the clear parallels he sees between the economist’s philosophy and the lessons his grandparents taught him as a child. Raised by his maternal grandparents in segregated Savannah, Georgia, after his father left when he was seven, Thomas grew up on land that had once been part of a plantation. His grandfather, Myers Anderson, had himself been raised by a freed slave.

“We actually lived—farmed on a part of that plantation, and we grew up every summer, we farmed on that plantation,” Thomas said. His grandfather received only nine months of formal schooling. His grandmother, Christine Anderson, was educated through the sixth grade. “Even though my grandfather only had nine months of education, the crown jewel was education,” Thomas explained. “My grandmother went to the sixth grade, for her the crown jewel.”

He described Christine as a “saintly woman” and called Myers “the single greatest man I’ve ever known.” His grandfather emphasized hard work, personal responsibility, and building the capacity to overcome obstacles rather than dwelling on disadvantages. “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.”

Whenever young Thomas claimed he could not accomplish something, his grandfather had a ready reply. “His favorite saying was, ‘Old man can’t is dead. I helped bury him,’” Thomas recalled. “And the old man can’t was buried many times in our house.”

Thomas said his grandfather’s example made complaints about obstacles difficult to justify. “My grandfather, no education, raised by a freed slave, and he never complained,” he said. “He did it. He was just a great man. Now what do you do? How do you complain when he had nothing, no education? What do you say to it? But he sets this example of how you live your life.”

Those same principles later appeared in Sowell’s writing, particularly in Race and Economics, which stressed 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. It’s the exact same thing.”

Thomas’s reflection underscores a consistent message of personal responsibility, education, and quiet strength—values that continue to shape both his jurisprudence and his public example.