Editor’s note: In these exclusive excerpts from the book “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words,” out Tuesday, author Michael Pack asks the Supreme Court justice about the influence of his maternal grandfather. Thomas was 2 when his father left the family.
The new book is a successor to the 2020 documentary about Thomas with the same title, which Pack produced and directed. Pack wrote the book with Mark Paoletta, a former official in both the Bush and Trump administrations who played a key role in the Senate’s confirmation of Thomas to the Supreme Court in 1991.
Michael Pack: In 1955, you moved to live with your grandparents in Savannah, Georgia. How and why did that happen? //
My grandfather said, “I will never tell you to do as I say. I will always tell you to do as I do.” Years went by and I thought about who would put that burden on themselves, because a kid sees all and a teenager sees and knows even more. And that’s the burden he put on himself.
I asked my brother when we were both in our 40s: “Did you ever think he was a hypocrite because of what he said, ‘Do as I do?’” My brother without hesitation said, “No.” Whatever mistakes he made, he admitted them, and he just said, “Follow me.”
He made us follow him. He wouldn’t let us play organized sports. He wouldn’t let us stray. He kept us close to him as though we were his apprentices in life, that we were adults in training. He was the one who was going to train us, so we were to follow him. Watch how he did it. “Watch how I live my life and you will learn.” //
On Saturdays, invariably, I was the one who went on the oil truck with him, and that was all day. When you rode with him, he was the professor and you were to be seen and not heard. You could not initiate a conversation unless you wanted to clarify an instruction he had given. You were constantly getting this one-way input. And you couldn’t get away from him because you always had to be around him.
