Justice Clarence Thomas

            Clarence Thomas is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the U.S and is the second American of black origin to serve in the highest court of the U.S after Retired Justice Thurgood Marshall. Born on June 23, 1948 in Pin Point, Georgia he spent his early life in Savanna, Georgia and was educated Holy Cross College where he majored in English as well as being active in social causes such as campaigns for civil rights and the protest against the American War in Vietnam. He later proceeded to Yale Law School where he helped establish the Black student Union while at the same time developing a conservative approach to issues. After his legal training, Thomas moved back to the South in 1974 where he worked as the assistant to the Attorney General of Missouri Mr. John Danforth before later on taking up the job of being a lawyer to Monsanto, an agricultural firm. In 1981, he was appointed the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Education majorly due to his past in the civil rights movement and to balance the composition of this important part of the US government. He is now a conservative and controversial judge though initially he had wanted to pursue a religious life having had seminary education stints at the St. John Vianney Minor Seminary and Immaculate Conception Seminary in order to become a catholic priest or cleric. He however left the seminary and decided to fight for civil rights after he overheard a fellow student at the seminary make fun of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
             In the year 1982, President Ronald Reagan appointed Thomas as the Chairman of the EEOC, a position in which he held until the year 1990 when President George H.W Bush nominated him to serve as a Judge in the U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. On July 1, 1991, after sixteen months as a judge of appeal, he was nominated to fill the position left vacant by Mr.