Anita Hill

Yeah.

And then I remember the episode that aired after the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill scandal, which I know had Julia Duffy in it, which means it was a way later episode-

Mm-hmm

... than these.

In 1991, the Senate Judiciary Committee opened hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The proceedings would become a watershed moment in the discussion of sexual harassment when Anita Hill, a law professor who had previously worked under Thomas, came forward with allegations against him.

In 2008, the large...

Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, C-E-R-N, was powered up for the first time, successfully firing the first beam of protons through the 17-mile underground ring tunnel.

And I wrote a review of this book that you guys can go check out at The Federalist.

Um, and really I... what I boil it down to is, is that this is a man, Justice Thomas, who has really has gone farther, and he's not done going further for the country, and he's done it all in spite of the odds being stacked against him, in spite of all of the left-wing attacks that have been waged against him throughout his life, whether it was the grotesque, uh, circus that had become his confirmation hearing with the Anita Hill a- allegations, uh, whether it's been more recently these left-wing threats against Justice Thomas and his conservative colleagues, or some of the ProPublica New York Times hit pieces about he and Justice Alito's finances and all of that nonsense that's been peddled.

Um, regardless of all of that stuff that's been thrown against him, he's a man who has stood by principle, stood by the Constitution, and consistently done right by the American people, and explained to them in his rulings in as clear and concise language as possible, you know, why he's ruling the way he is.

Um, and I think that that shows great respect, not just for the job that he has, but for the American people writ large.

And so what was interesting is, um, in the United States, Thomas Clarence, he's the Supreme Court justice, um, during his confirmation hearings, there was...

Anita Hill testified about things that had happened to her that he had, he had done to her in the workplace.

And there was enough kind of uprising by both parties, um, that in late 1991, so the- his hearings were early in '91, and then in, in late '91, um, the Civil Rights Act was passed.

And I'm like, "Okay, well, what does that have to do with women?" And so one of the things that was interesting in there is that now women could hold companies accountable.

The day was October 11, 1991.

Clarence Thomas, in one of his last days of his hearing, spoke out against the Anita Hill and the attacks against him.

Cut 45.

This is a circus, it's a national disgrace.

And what happened there, and I cover the confirmation hearing in full detail.

What happened there is the committee convened a new hearing.

And the American people listened to Anita Hill.

They listened to her allegations.

So Famously, you two are very close.

We're all close to Anita Hill.

And the way in which her testimony sparked all of these women running for political office.

Gloria came to fundraise for the candidate that I was kind of stuffing, you know, papers and envelopes and hoping to raise money for.

And all of the issues that we associate with radical Black feminism.

In other words, I would say to her that Black feminists in the 60s and 70s were demonized in our communities.

And if you look at the Anita Hill situation, which to me is the quintessential model of the way in which we prioritized racism, and could mistreat someone like Anita Hill and embrace Clarence Thomas.

And that was loads of Black women, including prominent Black women, such as Maya Angelou and others.

That just that distortion has given us the Supreme Court we have when we had the opportunity to actually defeat Clarence Thomas.

One of the reasons that so many people gave for supporting him was the denial that Anita Hill's story had anything to do with black women.

when in reality, black women created sexual harassment.

If you really wanna go back in history, the first feminist in America was Mariah Stewart, early in the 19th century.

... composed seven new tracks, swaps them out from the original, and that resulted in what I call one of the most formidable debut records of the '90s, Little Earthquakes.

And this single, Silent All These Years, came out only a few months after the Anita Hill story broke, and Tori says it caught a sort of cultural zeitgeist of anger and rage, and the song just kinda catapulted.

So I think it's quintessential Tori, and it's an impressive feat for a first record.

Let's listen.