A remarkable scene unfolded in Washington last Tuesday. Judges and hard-bitten lawyers gathered at the National Archives and wept. They were moved to tears of sadness, mirth, and delight by the premier of Created Equal, a new movie in which Justice Clarence Thomas tells his life story after 27 years of near-silence on the Supreme Court.
One hopes that this film, written and directed by Michael Pack, will change the way Thomas is understood for the rest of his life and by history. His is a remarkable story of pain, stoicism, grit, and exceptional achievement that for too long has been traduced by the Left’s tendentious depiction of him as a dishonorable dullard.
Thomas has written more than 600 Supreme Court opinions, 30% more than any other sitting justice. That’s not due to longevity; he overmatches them annually.
The real force of Created Equal comes from nearly two hours of Thomas talking to the camera. He tells of abject poverty first in the barrier islands and marshes of south Georgia, then in the hellish squalor of a tenement in Savannah. He speaks of his salvation by his stern, illiterate grandfather, a bust of whom looks down on Thomas in his chambers. Thomas journeyed through left-wing activism in the 1960s and 1970s back to Catholicism and thence via Republican administrations to the highest of all federal benches.
His persecution by the abortion lobby and its handmaidens in Congress and the naked racism of his media treatment for being an “uppity” black refusing to think as they direct has to be seen to be believed! His epochal clash with Senate Judiciary panel Democrats and the narrow but wonderful triumph of his eventual confirmation get interspersed with devastating video clips. It is harrowing yet uplifting. And the burblings of panel Chairman Joe Biden are comedy gold!
The movie is draining but leaves one wanting more. Pack told me, “In 30 years of making movies, I have never had an audience where there’s so much laughter and crying. That’s pretty gratifying.”
Created Equal will be released to select theaters at the end of January and will air on PBS next May. Everyone interested in the truth and a great story should go and see it. It is a magnificent and necessary corrective to the venomous falsehoods that have been heaped for a quarter of a century on a good man.
