by Diane Brady
Thomas’s closest bonds were with Hardy and the Georgia boys, especially Al Coleman and Bob DeShay. He was concerned that DeShay, now a senior who was living off campus, seemed to be spending more time socializing than studying. The situation with Al Coleman was even more troubling: A brilliant sophomore who awed the other men with his ability to read a book from start to finish every day, Coleman rarely bothered to go to class and had only managed to squeak through the previous year because he’d performed well on his finals. Gil Hardy, on the other hand, clearly shared Clarence’s ambition and drive to succeed, and was among the top-performing students in his class. Thomas found it amusing that people underestimated Hardy because of his Philadelphia slang, and it also comforted him to know that he wasn’t the only person who was pegged as less intelligent because of the way he spoke.
Hardy and Thomas also shared a sense of humor, which even some of their hallmates found surprisingly juvenile. They sometimes delighted in the crude, throwing out playful insults and obscenities while sometimes addressing each other as “bitch.” Some students reported coming home from dates only to have Thomas persistently press them for details of what had happened in bed. Another recalled being shocked by Thomas’s tendency to talk about explicit body parts—his or others—and tell people what to do with them. How these memories may have been shaped by later feelings about Thomas’s performance on the Supreme Court or his alleged harassment of Anita Hill is unclear, but Thomas himself admits there were probably times when the jokes went too far. “We were kids,” he says now. “I’d gone from wearing a cassock and preparing for the priesthood to being a mixed-up kid at college in the late 1960s.” Regardless of his interest in the other men’s sex lives, Thomas was not looking to meet women himself. He was still smitten with Kathy Ambush, the Anna Maria College student whom he had met through Jenkins during his sophomore year. He liked that Ambush spoke her mind and had a sharp sense of humor, and he especially liked her family. Unlike his grandfather, her parents never made Clarence feel small or unworthy. Years later Thomas would still recall fondly how Kathy’s father, a technician in a dental lab, made him everything from a workspace in the Ambush home to a bridge that kept his drifting teeth in place. To the men on the corridor, Thomas seemed more confident and happier than they’d ever seen him.
There were times when the overall atmosphere on the corridor was raucous. The men lampooned one another, whether it was teasing Philadelphia recruit Walter Roy for his short stature or Eddie J. for his good looks. The containers of food from Ma Wells to her son arrived frequently, in portions big enough to share with the other men. Weekends brought parties and bottles of Ripple, a cheap fortified wine that was Thomas’s particular favorite, as well as beer, malt liquor, and marijuana for the few who partook. They also brought visits from girlfriends like Nina Mitchell, who had transferred to Newton College of the Sacred Heart and would often make the forty-five-minute trip down from Boston to see Ted.
Wellesley had become a favorite for the black students of Holy Cross—in particular, the women of its Ethos Choir. The choir was composed exclusively of African American women who were part of the Ethos black student group. While the choir visited numerous campuses in the Northeast, the reception they got from the black men at Holy Cross was so enthusiastic that the college quickly became a popular stop for the women, too. The BSU members would often meet the choir at their bus with flowers and escort them around campus. Clarence Thomas even composed a poem that he distributed to other men on the corridor, exhorting them to treat all the sisters who came to the college well. The title: “Is you is, or is you ain’t, a brother?” A high proportion of trips off campus soon involved a stop at Wellesley to see how the Ethos sisters were doing.
The men on the corridor also had a shared cause in a “Free Breakfast for Children” program that sophomore Lenny Cooper had helped start in Worcester. It was modeled on a program that the Black Panthers had launched in Oakland, California, at the start of 1969 with the goal of feeding inner-city children before they went to school. Although touted as an initiative to help black children, the reality was that Worcester’s tiny black population, which stood at about 2 percent of the total, meant that many of the kids being helped were actually white. Nevertheless, it gave the BSU members a chance to get involved in the movement and put their beliefs into action.
The challenge was finding a steady stream of men willing to get up at dawn to head downtown and make breakfast for a bunch of kids. Although Thomas was among the most vocal of the volunteers in the breakfast program, and often gets credit in the media for starting it, Ed Jones was a much more regular participant. Jones didn’t mind getting up early. He found that he enjoyed seeing a side of Worcester that was so different from the sometimes stifling atmosphere of the campus. Walking by the manicured lawns and stately buildings of Holy Cross, it was easy to forget that they were living in an industrial city that had seen its share of hardship as manufacturing jobs came and went. Besides Jones and later Lenny Cooper, from the class of ’72, the steadiest presence was Gordon Davis. Many mornings, Davis and Jones would go knocking on doors along the corridor at 6 A.M. to see who was available to help out. Thomas tried to go a day or two a week. Al Coleman, the Savannah sophomore who’d cut class to read, also let himself get dragged along, as did Eddie Jenkins because he liked to cook. Most of the others pretended to sleep, or would yell that they had been up late and would be lucky to feed themselves that morning, never mind the hungry children of Worcester.
With so many distractions, it was easy for some of the men to lose sight of why they were at Holy Cross. Not so for Ted Wells and Clarence Thomas. During the week they were more likely to run into each other at the library than on the corridor. Both men were known to put pressure on the other black students to hit the books. More than once, Thomas tried to take Coleman to task for skipping class, saying, “Man, what are you doing? You’ve got the rest of your life to fool around.” Wells’s tactics were more playful, but also more frequent. Wells shared Brooks’s view that the men who had made it to Holy Cross had an opportunity to make something of themselves and, in fact, had a responsibility to do so. The only way to prove that they deserved a spot at Holy Cross was to excel once they got there, and the best way for black men to prove themselves equal to whites was to outperform them now that they had finally gotten the chance. Although growing up in a positive all-black environment may have buffered Wells from discrimination, he understood the stereotypes. Their job was to break them. Otherwise the doors that were starting to open might just as easily swing shut again.
While Wells liked to socialize, especially after coming back from an evening of study at the library, he also saw the men’s proximity as an opportunity to exert some friendly peer pressure. If he saw someone reading a magazine or listening to music during exam time, several hallmates recalled, he inevitably would speak up: “So you ready for that test, brother? I don’t see you studying.”
Wells saved his most direct admonitions for Eddie Jenkins, who shared a room with him, except for the weeks he was forced to spend living in quarantine that fall with the rest of the football team. One night, while Jenkins was getting ready to close his books after studying for a political science test, Wells said, “J., what are you doing?”
“Getting some sleep, man,” said Jenkins. “It’s one in the morning.”
“What do you think you’ll get on that test?”
“I don’t know,” Jenkins replied. “Maybe a B.”
“Man, how can you settle for a B when an A is still on the table?”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“Man, they’re all a big deal. You only get one shot.”
Bleary-eyed, Jenkins went back to his desk. He ended up getting an A-minus on the test.
The Black Student Union now held its meetings on the corridor on Sunday nights after dinner. Though the BSU agenda could range from suggestions for social events to complaints about the deteriorating BSU van, a few common themes eme
rged. Despite the larger numbers, the men seemed even more dissatisfied with the black presence on campus, from the number of students and faculty to the dearth of courses on black literature and history. Holy Cross had not moved fast enough or far enough, in their view. And few BSU meetings would pass without some debate over how to respond to racism, perceived or overt, as well as the turmoil on other campuses and issues on the national scene. Lenny Cooper recalled emotions running high over incidents like a white student loudly complaining about the prospect of “jigaboo broads” coming to campus mixers, which had provoked a fistfight. They argued about the latest edicts from groups like the Nation of Islam, and whether the BSU should issue official statements on university policies or developments in the Vietnam War.
While “Daddy Art” Martin remained the BSU’s official chairman, he had opted for a less active role in order to focus on getting into a good law school. Nobody seemed to mind vice chair Ted Wells taking on a bigger leadership role; running the union and lobbying the administration on BSU demands seemed less like a perk than a hassle to most of the men. Wells, though, enjoyed it. He shared his mother’s philosophy that the best way to get things done was to win people over and almost embarrass them into being nice. Anger at injustice could be powerful; anger at a fellow brother was a sign of weakness.
That stance helped Wells to handle both the anxieties that everyone felt about the times and the eclectic mix of new students. Several of the freshmen who had arrived that fall were more extreme in their views of racial justice and more willing to consider extreme action. One newcomer invited a Black Panther to speak to the BSU members. Another introduced a motion to buy guns and shoot all the white people, to right the wrongs of slavery. His proposal prompted roars of laughter instead of a vote. Another suggested that, since the food in Kimball was so bad—itself a matter of debate to men like Stan Grayson, who still praised its high quality—the entire BSU should become Muslim and demand a special diet. Wells tried to remain unflappable, always ready with a “yes, brother” or “interesting point, brother” before moving people along to the next item on the agenda.
Although the BSU membership had more than doubled in number, Ted Wells and Clarence Thomas continued to command a hefty share of attention at the BSU meetings. As often as not, the argument would start when Wells presented his thoughts on a given topic on the agenda. Thomas would then speak up to offer an alternate view. The two men would then get locked in a debate. To Grayson, it felt less like Thomas was passionately arguing on principle than that he was simply enjoying the challenge of playing devil’s advocate. Thomas liked to dissect an argument and turn the arguer’s logic against him, much like a cross-examination. Sometimes Thomas would even end with a laugh, leaving the men unsure of where he actually stood on what he’d just said. And Wells seemed just as pleased to pick apart Thomas’s points. The frequency of the clashes between the two men prompted Grayson to start dubbing the BSU meetings “Sunday Night Theater.”
On some topics, though, Thomas did feel strongly. He resented the apparent assumption—by both the BSU and by Father Brooks—that every one of the black students needed money, coddling, and special services to make it at Holy Cross. The people who needed help, he argued, were any students who couldn’t afford to pay the tuition. The father of one black student from the prosperous Shaker Heights suburb of Cleveland had felt insulted when Holy Cross offered his son aid for the fall of 1969, and he had turned it down. Thomas argued that if the BSU pushed the school to limit scholarships to the students who really needed them, that might free up enough money to allow more black men to enroll. Wells challenged Thomas to find one member who was getting a completely free ride at Holy Cross. Most of the BSU members were waiting tables, taking part in research projects, delivering newspapers, and becoming resident assistants to help make ends meet. They were no better off, in his view, than many white men whose parents were helping them foot the tuition bills. As far as Wells could tell, Holy Cross had so far been unable to attract wealthy black students, and he argued that it had to offer some incentive for black students to spend four years in a cold and somewhat unfriendly environment.
The entertainment value of Thomas’s speeches masked the reality that he did feel at odds with many of his hallmates. While the increasingly strident tone of discourse at BSU meetings didn’t seem to bother Wells, it was wearing on Thomas. Despite the comforts and camaraderie of the corridor, Thomas started to feel a greater distance from many of the other black students. He felt there was something narcissistic about their general worldview and it bothered him that they seemed to feel they could cast stones with impunity because they were oppressed. He didn’t like the way it was assumed that the black man was inherently without sin. He hadn’t felt as out of sync with the other black students a year earlier, when the BSU was much smaller and Wells was his main opponent in debates. Even when they fiercely disagreed, Thomas had assumed that Wells shared his fundamental belief that the best way to take on the Man was to beat him at his own game. Now he wasn’t so sure; even Wells seemed to have embraced the idea that the college owed them extra privileges because of their skin color. Thomas wondered how many men in the eclectic class of 1973 would graduate and go on to forge successful careers. Thomas loved Father Brooks, but it bothered him that the dean seemed to bend to whatever the BSU wanted. It felt condescending somehow, like Brooks thought they might not be tough enough to cope with the realities of Holy Cross on their own.
The person Thomas was hardest on, though, was himself. It wasn’t just about getting people to look beyond his skin color: Nothing seemed to bother him more than the sense that he might be characterized as average or merely good. One of his old professors remembers the way Thomas would visibly bristle at the notion. None of Thomas’s grades went unexamined; even the solid ones prompted a visit from him, asking the professor how he could do better the next time. By his junior year, simply being smart wasn’t enough for Thomas; he had to be recognized as being smart. The issue wasn’t simply one of pride. After dabbling with the idea of a career in journalism, he now had law school at Harvard or Yale in his sights.
The fun that Thomas seemed to have at many BSU meetings and on the corridor was far from evident in the classroom. There he could come across as serious, industrious, and almost grim in his determination to succeed. While he got high grades for his thorough and straightforward arguments, some of his professors didn’t always find him fun to teach. Classmates recall that he rarely spoke or asked questions during discussions, a trait that continued and created some controversy after he was appointed to the Supreme Court. Still, in a 1994 speech, Thomas looked back on his Holy Cross days and talked about the inspiration that he had found in classes like Readings in Renaissance Prose, where he was able to see parallels between his own beliefs and those of historic characters. He became fascinated with the childishness of Wolsley in The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey, and with the steadfast courage of More in The Life of Sir Thomas More, comforting his executioner at his beheading. How much better to be like a Thomas More than like a Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas told his audience, “rising as the wheel rises but then tragically crushed or splattered with mud as it descends.” Such heroism not only inspired him, Thomas recalled; it also helped him to crystallize his thinking on the importance of character and morality. It helped him to deal with the hypocrisy he saw around him.
Wells, too, was bothered by the contradictions that he saw on campus. Although people talked about equality, popular opinion seemed to be that most of the black men at Holy Cross were recruited more for their muscles than their minds. Long after Wells dropped out of football, classmates continued to ask him what sport he played. The easygoing temperament that he showed in handling BSU meetings was harder to summon up when reacting to insults in public. In response to a letter in The Crusader from a fellow student who called on blacks to “relax and be magnanimous over the wrongs you suffer,” Wells wrote that “I knew that if I stayed at Holy Cross long enough, some
benevolent White man would show me the right path to follow.” He continued with an offer to shine the student’s shoes, carry his books, and create a “Black ROTC” to train more brothers to fight in the “White man’s wars.”
As he settled into his sophomore year, Wells found that his relationship with Father Brooks began to shift. While the two still enjoyed warm conversations on a regular basis, Wells took his enhanced responsibilities in the BSU seriously. He wanted the BSU to take a more active role in black recruitment. To him it didn’t make sense to have recruitment directed out of the dean’s office. Wells felt that the black students might prove to be better ambassadors in recruiting students than white administrators. But he noticed that Brooks wasn’t exactly applauding his ideas: When Wells wrote up a letter to send to black applicants to the class of 1974 advertising Holy Cross’s generosity toward its black students, Brooks shot back a curt response to the admissions director. “I suggest you explain to Ted Wells that he is not able to guarantee financial assistance” (underlining the words he and guarantee twice). “This is the prerogative of the President.” The black students could meet with recruits and show them around, but that was it. Brooks was always willing to listen, though, especially where the students were concerned, and could even be moved to a different point of view after hearing a compelling explanation: Stan Grayson, for one, got his wish to strike the phrase “Old Black Joe” from the lyrics of “Mamie Reilly”; it was replaced with “Go Cross Go.” But Wells also understood that whatever friendship existed between him and Brooks, the boundaries were clear: He was the student and Brooks had the power. The dean would listen respectfully and ask questions, but he wasn’t going to cede authority. While the times may have spurred a seemingly endless list of requests from the BSU and other student groups, Brooks’s priorities when deciding on a response came down to a few simple questions: Was it something that might help the students succeed? Could they afford it? And was it the right thing to do?
