BLACK CATHOLICISM: SUPREME COURT JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS

Justice Clarence Thomas

The Journey of a Black Catholic from Georgia to the Supreme Court

Justice Thomas was born into poverty in 1948 in Pin Point, Georgia, a small, predominantly Black, Gullah-speaking community near  Savannah founded by freedmen after the Civil War. 

Raised Catholic, Thomas attended the predominantly Black St. Pius X high school for two years before transferring to St. John Vianney's Minor seminary on the Isle of Hope, where he was an honor student among few Black students.  He decided to become a priest. He briefly attended Conception Seminary College, a Catholic seminary in Missouri. The only black seminarian there, he quit after Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated.  At a nun's suggestion, Thomas then enrolled at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, as a sophomore transfer student.

Thomas entered Yale Law School, from which he received his law degree in 1974. He was elevated to Justice of the Supreme Court by President George H.W. Bush in 1991. He is now the longest serving Justice on the Supreme Court.

You can learn more about Justice Thomas’ life in his own words in the documentary Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words which you can stream for free.