Clarence Thomas: The Justice Nobody Knows
Supreme Court Justice Gives First Television Interview To 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft
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Play CBS Video Video The Private Clarence Thomas Steve Kroft interviews Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas about his life, work, and the highly controversial confirmation hearings that Thomas believes set a harmful precedent. (Part 1)
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Video The Private Clarence Thomas Steve Kroft interviews Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas about his life, work, and the highly controversial confirmation hearings that Thomas believes set a harmful precedent. (Part 2)
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Video Steve Kroft's Reporter's Notebook Steve Kroft answers questions about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (CBS)
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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, left, and his wife Virginia speak to Steve Kroft at a recreational vehicle park in Georgia. (CBS)
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Steve Kroft, right, interviews Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in rural Pinpoint, Ga., where Thomas was born in 1948. (CBS)
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One of his passions is the 40-foot motor home he and his wife use to explore the United States in their downtime. The U.S. marshals who protect Justice Thomas wouldn't let 60 Minutes show the outside for security reasons, since he has been known to put up overnight in Wal-Mart parking lots.
Thomas finds this pastime relaxing. "It's a way from the sort of, the meanness that you see in Washington and you get here with just the regular folks. And it's so pleasant."
But this trip Thomas and Kroft took was business and the route familiar to the justice. They were headed down Route 17 towards Savannah, where his long journey to the Supreme Court began.
Thomas was born in a shack in the isolated backwaters of the American South in 1948, on a 25-acre peninsula known as Pinpoint, Ga. It was settled by freed West African slaves known as Gullahs or Geechees, who lived off shellfish in the marshes and maintained a distinct culture, well into the 20th century.
"With our own dialect. Our own language," Thomas explains. "It made learning standard English a little bit difficult."
His father deserted the family when Thomas was two. His mother made a living shucking oysters and picking crabs for the restaurants in Savannah, while he caught minnows and practiced skipping oyster shells.
"This is what we did. I mean, kids now have videogames. This is what we spent our time doin'," Thomas remembers.
The house he lived in is long gone, but the oak tree that was behind it still there.
Asked what kind of house it was, Thomas says, "We used to like to say it was poor but clean. There wasn't much to it. There was no electricity."
And there was also no indoor plumbing. "There was an outhouse that we shared with some other families," he explains.
Produced By Michael Radutzky and Denise Cetta
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