When the Smithsonian opened the National Museum of African American History and Culture Museum last week, some of the day’s loveliest moments involved President Obama and former President Bush, celebrating the event together with their wives and the American people. And rightly so: the museum is a wonderful achievement, and long overdue. It should help to bring the American people still closer together, across racial or political lines, to celebrate America’s best legacies while (like the nearby Holocaust Museum) remembering some of history’s worst injustices.
But for that very reason, it’s a shame to see the new museum marred by its own decision expunge from its historical narrative one of the most important African-American statesmen of our time: Justice Clarence Thomas.
Clarence Thomas overcame poverty, family strife, and racial prejudice to become the Supreme Court’s second African-American justice. Even after joining the Court, he endured astonishing bigotry and hatred in public (as I recounted last summer in THE WEEKLY STANDARD), from those who called him the helpless tool of white judges and clerks (Mary McGrory, Jane Mayer, and Jill Abramson), or who called him lazy (Linda Greenhouse), or who called him a “sputtering” angry man (Jeffrey Tobin), or who even wished him an early death by heart disease (Julianne Malveaux). In short, and to borrow from Juan Williams’s eloquent words, Justice Thomas was “conveniently transformed” by bitter ideologues “into a monster about whom it is fair to say anything, to whom it is fair to do anything.”
After 25 years, happily, much of that has faded into the background, as Justice Thomas’s service on the Court finally came to overshadow Anita Hill’s long-discredited accusations against him, at least among the broad majority of Americans who aren’t still grinding their ideological axes against him. Today, Justice Thomas is better known for his work on the Court—which, whether you agree or disagree with him, is increasingly recognized for both its quality and quantity.
As to the former, he is often the Court’s most eloquent defender of constitutional first principles. And as to the latter, he is far and away the Court’s most productive member, in terms of his written opinions; in recent years, his output dwarfs that of his colleagues.
In light of his personal story, and his legacy on the Court, one would have expected, or at least hoped, to see some mention of Justice Thomas in the Smithsonian’s new museum. But unfortunately that’s not the case: The new museum ignores him altogether, as Mark Paoletta explains in the Hill:
How unfortunate: Justice Thomas’s critics often mock him for remaining silent at the Court’s oral arguments. But now Justice Thomas is being silenced inside the Smithsonian’s new museum.
And that shameful omission is exacerbated by the museum’s further decision to celebrate Thomas’s attackers. Inside the museum, Hill and her supporters receive significant attention, with photos and quotations. And on the museum’s web site, you can see a button that reads, “I believe Anita Hill.” Museum officials conceded to Circa reporter Raffi Williams that Justice Thomas’s own story has “very little presence” in any of the exhibitions. That’s putting it rather generously.
Let’s hope that the museum’s curators soon rethink their decision to expunge Justice Thomas from this crucial chapter of American history. In the meantime, we’re lucky to have the two websites that Mr. Paoletta has created: JusticeThomas.com, to celebrate the justice’s legacy on the Court; and ConfirmationBiased.com, to rebut thoroughly the conspiracy theories and other attacks against Thomas.
The Smithsonian should stop treating Clarence Thomas as an invisible man.
Adam J. White is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
