Dear Colleagues,
Last Friday, President Trump issued a Presidential Proclamation recognizing February 2025 as National Black History Month, and “name[ed] upon public officers … and all of the folks of the United States to look at this month with acceptable packages, ceremonies, and actions.” In his Proclamation, President Trump accurately famous that “black Americans have been amongst our nation’s most consequential leaders, shaping the cultural and political future of our Nation in profound methods,” and recognized as “Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Thomas Sowell, and Justice Clarence Thomas” as “American heroes.”
President Trump is true. Justice Thomas is an American hero. He is an important choose of the final 100 years. He is an efficient and honorable man, and my buddy. Because the President has referred to as upon us to have fun the achievements of women and men like Justice Thomas throughout Black History Month, I wish to take this event to share a little bit about him.
I encourage anybody who desires to find out about Justice Thomas’s unimaginable journey to look at the stirring 2020 documentary Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words. Descended from West African slaves, Justice Thomas grew up in punishing poverty. He additionally grew up underneath a authorities that denied black residents equality underneath the regulation. He couldn’t stroll by sure public parks, enter sure public libraries, or attend sure public colleges due to the colour of his pores and skin. Justice Thomas thus would have extra trigger than most to stage grievances and maintain grudges towards America.
But he did the alternative. He believed within the guarantees of America’s founding, and he climbed to the best heights of American authorities and society. One of the issues that makes Americans distinct from the remainder of the world is our perception that our previous isn’t essentially our future. With onerous work, willpower, and expertise, any American can overcome the hardships of the previous and obtain greatness. Justice Thomas is the dwelling embodiment of that American spirit.
He has overcome greater than only a troublesome upbringing. His views on the regulation—which he as soon as articulated in lone dissents however which now command a majority of the Court—have been pilloried by American elites for years. He was, and is, the goal of slurs and calumnies from progressive opponents. Many of those assaults have been explicitly racist. But he’s uncowed. The identical indominable spirit with which he overcame Jim Crow empowered Justice Thomas to reject elite naysayers and chart his personal path within the regulation—a path that the Supreme Court now follows.
Of course, he didn’t do that alone. Justice Thomas’s household helped push him to those heights. Justice Thomas’s grandfather, Myers Anderson, a hardworking small-business proprietor in Savannah, spurred Justice Thomas to excellence. His spouse Ginni is an American patriot who has bravely and unapologetically supported her husband all through his public profession, even when his opponents resorted to surprising lies and smears. And Justice Thomas has lengthy recognized his deep Catholic religion as a supply of energy and braveness.
I clerked for Justice Thomas. I got here to know him as not only a nice man, but additionally a great and first rate particular person. He loves his regulation clerks like members of his household. And he is aware of and cares concerning the kinds of those who the typical DC titan would move proper by—custodians, assistants, tour guides, and cops. He remembers their birthdays, their youngsters, and their well being struggles.
I can consider no higher abstract of Justice Thomas’s greatness, and no higher protection of America’s promise, than the closing traces of his concurrence in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard, by which the Supreme Court adopted Justice Thomas’s long-held view that race-conscious admissions insurance policies violate the Constitution’s promise of colorblind equality:
“While I’m painfully conscious of the social and financial ravages which have befallen my race and all that suffer discrimination, I maintain out enduring hope that this nation will stay as much as its ideas so clearly enunciated within the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States: that each one males are created equal, are equal residents, and have to be handled equally earlier than the regulation.”
I want you all a contented Black History Month.
Andrew N. Ferguson
Chairman
United States Federal Trade Commission
