Former Congressman William L. Clay Sr. is coming home to read from his new book about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas just before the national holiday to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but Clay does not think the two men should be mentioned in the same sentence.
“Justice Thomas has no idea of the suffering and struggle people like Martin Luther King Jr. and others went through to make it possible for him to sit on the Supreme Court with his black butt,” Clay told The American.
Clay will discuss and sign his book “Clarence Thomas: A Knight in Tainted Armor” at 7 p.m. Thursday, January 15 in the Carnegie Room of the Central Library, 1301 Olive St., and again 2 p.m. Friday, January 16 in the William L. Clay Sr. Early Childhood Development/Parenting Education Center at Harris-Stowe State University, 10 N. Compton.
“This is my sixth book, and all of my books have been attempting to correct all the inaccuracies and misrepresentations of black people’s contributions to history,” Clay said.
He said Thomas’ appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court “is one of the most gross representations of what black people are about in history. For the people who pushed him up to say he is representative of our people was a disgrace.”
Clay puts the blame squarely on the president who appointed Thomas.
“George H.W. Bush put a man on the Supreme Court who is just as anti-civil rights and anti-black as Bush has been throughout entire career,” Clay said. “George H.W. Bush never saw a civil rights measure he could support. He never supported a single piece of legislation that advanced the cause of black people becoming an integral part of this country and of black people obtaining first-class citizenship.”
Bush first appointed Thomas to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1990. When Thurgood Marshall retired from the Supreme Court in 1991, Bush elevated Thomas to the Supreme Court. Clay said Thomas’ voting record on the court has been consistent with the values of the president who appointed him.
“He has had a tragic impact on black people by being part of the conservative majority in the 5-4 decisions that are returning black people to the status of separate but equal – which was totally unequal. He is a black man on the Supreme Court who does everything in his power to keep black people from enjoying first-class citizenship.”
Many other legal analysts have voiced similar judgments on Thomas’ conservatism.
“He has imported once outré conservative ideas, about such issues as gun rights under the Second Amendment and deregulation of political campaigns, into the mainstream,” Jeffrey Toobin wrote of Thomas in The New Yorker in 2014. “Scalia wrote District of Columbia v. Heller, which restricted gun control, and Kennedy wrote Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which undermined decades of campaign-finance law, but Thomas was an intellectual godfather of both decisions.”
Clay’s previous books include: “Bill Clay: A Political Voice at the Grass Roots”; “Just Permanent Interests: Black American in Congress 1870-1991”; “The Jefferson Bank Confrontation”; “To Kill or Not to Kill: Thoughts on Capital Punishment”; and “Anatomy of an Economic Murder: A Statistical Review of the Negro in St. Louis Employment Field.”
The first African-American U.S. representative from Missouri, Clay served in the United States House of Representatives for more than three decades. During his tenure, he used his experience as a civil rights activist and labor union representative in St. Louis to promote legislation to help minorities and U.S. workers.
“Congressman Clay Sr. holds a strong legacy in the St. Louis region, the state of Missouri, and the nation,” stated HSSU President Dwaun Warmack, “and we are honored to host a book signing for him.”