Speaking Truth to Power (38 page)

The Fleming investigation included inquiries into Timothy Phelps’ and Nina Totenberg’s activities. As the two reporters who first aired the story about my interview with the FBI and statement to the Senate, both likely knew the source of the leak. Totenberg had a copy of my statement. How it came to her is still a mystery. Their cooperation was limited; both rejected requests for interviews. Fleming countered by issuing subpoenas to Phelps and Totenberg demanding that they appear and bring with them documents relating to the investigation. Again, Phelps and Totenberg resisted but were later deposed. Citing the First Amendment’s protection of the press, they continued to withhold the names of their sources and the records of their telephone calls.

Fleming asked me to write a letter to the Senate Rules Committee supporting his request “to compel answers from Tim Phelps and Nina Totenberg.” Though I had a personal interest in finding out who had leaked my statement, I refused to be used by the Senate in their fight with the press. I found it ironic that the same body which had treated me so ungraciously would seek my assistance in this matter. I was only as important to them as I was useful. Finally, the chess match concluded when the Senate declined to seek further information from the two reporters.

As a lawyer I have a healthy respect for the First Amendment’s free press protections. Yet I was bothered by the fact that the reporters, the
ones closest to the source of the leak, were protected from the government’s intrusion and I was not. As a private citizen I have some constitutional protection of my privacy but none which the Senate felt compelled to recognize. Despite the fact that Peter Fleming had even asked for the details of telephone conversations I had with my sister JoAnn, most indications were that Fleming was trying to be reasonable in his inquiry. Despite Fleming’s best intentions, the process designed to be a violation of my privacy proved to be just that. Yet I did not have the status and connections to shield myself from any inquiry no matter how far-fetched it seemed. I did not have the time or resources to fight the Senate and the FBI. Moreover, by the time of the investigation, I had depleted any energy with which I could wage such a fight.

After months of the investigation, I saw it as yet another examination of me, rather than a means of improving the confirmation process. And though Fleming seemed to view his role as that of neutral fact finder, his questions about contacts with interest groups made clear that he was pursuing the Republicans’ conspiracy theory. I was willing to cooperate with an investigation, but what was developing was an effort to discover whether I was deliberately or negligently responsible for the public awareness of my statement.

In his letter to Andy Coats dated March 31, after reviewing all of the information gathered to date, Fleming expressed regret that the investigation called for a second interview. Through no fault or even intent of Peter Fleming, the investigation became a replay of the hearings. Once again, I was questioned extensively about private confidential matters while Thomas was given deference. And the press, which could not and should not be castigated by the government, failed to respond to legitimate concerns that the public has about confidentiality of government documents.

A three-hundred-page document that failed to identify the source of the “unauthorized disclosure of’ my statement was the end product of Fleming’s investigation. On May 5, 1992, an assistant sent me a copy of Fleming’s report. The letter accompanying the report was brief to the point of perfunctory.

By the time I received it, I had stopped wondering about what conclusions Fleming might reach. Yet, despite my temporary indifference and my misgivings about the investigation, I was stung by the fact that nowhere in the letter was there any acknowledgment of my cooperation in the investigation—there was certainly no “thank you.”

Like so many things that occurred in my life during this time, I viewed the conclusion of the investigation with mixed feelings. I found one thing in the contents of the report about which I could be positive. It made clear that I had in no way deliberately acted to set in motion the public hearing of the matter. This message no doubt escaped the diehard conspiracy proponents but it was a consolation for me. And by May of 1992 I needed affirmation.

The attacks on my personal and professional integrity continued. Threats of violence, now routine, were no less frightening and only slightly less disconcerting. Rumors spread that there was a reward being offered by a “conservative women’s organization” to anyone who could find “dirt on Anita Hill.” David Brock’s virulent “hit piece” had appeared in the
American Spectator Magazine
supplying Thomas’ supporters with new perversions for their attack on me.

Official involvement in the episode, which peaked with the televised hearing of October 1991 and the vote to confirm Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, ended with the special investigator’s submission in May. But this was the only sense in which it was finished. Within various communities in the population, the matter was far from completed—mere mention of the proceedings evoked highly pitched and emotional
debates. Those debates grew into rare frank conversations about gender, race, sex, and finally, sexual harassment.

Though the impact of the hearing of 1991 on my own life is of course profound, that is not what made this event significant. What made the hearing significant is the reverberations felt in a number of communities: the African American community, the community of all women, the academic community including my university and law school community, and finally my community of relatives and friends—all communities in which I have some involvement. I measure the importance of the hearings on how it changed—if in some cases only in terms of the dialogue—these communities and my relationship to them.

N
otwithstanding its familiarity, the drive to the law school from my home, even with its four stop signs, is too brief and distracting to provide much time for reflection. In the aftermath of the raucous days surrounding the hearing, the halls of the school portray the kind of calm that exists only after a period of chaos. But underneath that surface the chaos continued. My requisite cup of coffee in hand, I pause at my office door for inspiration from the quote I have displayed there for years. “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.… You must do the thing that you cannot do.”

I clipped these words of Eleanor Roosevelt together with her photo from a 1987 calendar which depicted the words of a different “peacemaker” each month of that year. Roosevelt’s words speak directly to the law school experience, an experience which tries most students and some faculty. Originally, I chose this quote to allay the fears of my first-year law students. But for years these words had accurately applied to my own challenges as well, and never more so than in 1991. Each day as I entered my office, they provided me with a bit of determination to face my own fears. For just as the actions of the Judiciary Committee had issued a challenge to other women, it challenged me as well. And inside my office, just beyond the quotation, new demands awaited my response.

I open the door to my office and am reminded of the comments from
students about the calming effect of its blue walls. The colors and textures of the room, the Wedgwood blue of the walls, the textbooks impressively bound in a fabric intent upon resembling leather, the soft tans and browns in the painting of an African woman and her child, even the wood of the oak desk, have a calming, familiar effect. They contrast the piles of mostly unopened mail that amassed daily. The letters I received had become priceless to me. As I struggled to understand my situation, each offered the promise of new insight. Each day I set about to read at least a few, treating each like the precious item any one might be. By this time the trays of letters and cards arriving daily totaled about six hundred. They were coming with increased frequency. It was October 24. I woke that morning to the news that Clarence Thomas had been sworn in as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. But the event had little real consequence in my life. For a moment the thought of it stung me lightly but when I arrived in my office to the mail, the faxes, the telegrams, and the ringing telephone, it did not matter.

Careful not to spill my coffee, I sit at my desk and clear off a small space. On this day, I discover a missive that fulfilled the promise.

I was at once consoled and dismayed by this letter. Though happy for the affirmation that I had done the right thing, the accuracy of her observation about the reaction from the black community saddened me. I was just beginning to feel the toll that that reaction would take on me.

Growing up in Oklahoma, I was always keenly aware of my race and the social and psychological implications of being black in a state whose history and politics were often aligned with those of the Jim Crow
South. The penalty for failure to understand racial dynamics was severe even if only rarely dealt. The stories of racially motivated beatings and lynchings and restrictive laws in the state, though old, had lost little of their power to remind us that we were an identifiable minority with a history. My father told of the threats against eligible blacks of mixed Native American descent who sought to register on the tribal roles or to vote in the general elections. My uncle told of his fear when his car broke down at night on the outskirts of a “sundown” town. My mother told of the fifteen-hour bus ride to a relative’s funeral in Arkansas and being restricted from using the rest room facilities at various stations along the way. Ten of my siblings graduated from segregated schools. So even in the unlikely event that the color of my and my family members’ skin had somehow become insignificant, the stories about race and the racial dynamics I experienced reminded me who I am and what that meant to others. More than the racism, it was the culture of the black rural community from which I derived my identity. The programs at the local black high school, the tiny wood-frame churches sprinkled throughout the countryside, the food, the music, the language, were all uniquely black and often uniquely rural. I knew who I was. I had always identified with the black community.

Yet in 1991 that community, the source of my social and psychological identity from childhood, became the source of my greatest discomfort. Voices in the community rose to condemn me for committing a community sin—bearing witness against a black man made all the worse because my protest involved matters of sexuality. For the first time in my life, I began to question my place in the black community and its place in my life. Nevertheless, in this letter I saw not simply the community’s condemnation but an affirmation of my continued membership in it. A
USA Today
poll of African Americans showed that 63 percent thought that Thomas should be confirmed, though only 47 percent said that they believed Judge Thomas was telling the truth. Though only 20 percent believed my accusations, 43 percent said that the racism in the process was directed at Thomas. At the conclusion of the hearing, President Bush appealed to the Senate based on that very sentiment in the African
American community. On the day of the confirmation vote, Bush described Thomas a “wonderful inspiration” who had the “overwhelming support of the American people.”

There were other voices in the African American community. In November a group of African American women had taken out an ad in
The New York Times
and various papers around the country condemning the actions of the Senate Judiciary Committee in not fully investigating my claim and in the way it conducted the hearing after the leak of my statement. Shortly after the hearing, Jewel Jackson McCabe, founder of the Coalition of 100 Black Women, a national civic and social organization made up of local chapters, invited me to New York to receive an award from the organization. Some of the local chapters agreed; others did not, reflecting the mixed feelings of the larger African American community. Nevertheless, I knew that only through black women as individuals and as groups would I regain my place in the community. Some black men had spoken out on my behalf. During the hearing, Roger Wilkins and an ad hoc group, Concerned Black Men, attempted to engage the press in a more realistic discussion about the issues raised. After the hearing, the Reverend Jesse Jackson became a supporter, but these voices were drowned out as the politicians played on those who expressed hostility to me and my claim. Nevertheless, I knew there were African American women who fully appreciated my dilemma and embraced my right to speak as their own.

As I explored my feelings toward the community of my birth and choice, my first concern was for the two African American women who followed me at Thomas’ office, Sukari Hardnett and Angela Wright, both of whom told of similar behavior. I felt a sense of guilt and indebtedness to them both. Perhaps if I had brought a claim against Thomas, Wright and Hardnett may not have had to endure Thomas’ behavior. I even recalled other incidents long forgotten. Once when a black female law student, who was married at the time, had sought my advice about a clerkship with Thomas, my own self-doubt kept me from vetoing the idea. I counseled her, never mentioning Thomas’ behavior toward me but suggesting that she proceed cautiously before pursuing the matter—
making sure she knew what she wanted. “Perhaps as a married man, he has matured,” I thought to myself. “Perhaps he will treat her differently because she is married,” I rationalized at the time, recalling that I, like Hardnett and Wright, had been single and Thomas was recently divorced.