document: Thomas and his brother made it in the white world . Their sister , reared by an aunt , had four children and went on welfare. ; Thomas , 43 , credits everything he has achieved to his grandparents . He choked up twice on national television Monday when he mentioned them . In a hostile world , they taught him to rely on himself . They shaped his views on individualism , race and society , views that guide him today. ; `` I was raised to survive under the totalitarianism of segregation , '' Thomas wrote in a paper for the Heritage Foundation , a conservative public policy institute in Washington . `` We were raised to survive in spite of the dark , oppressive cloud of governmentally sanctioned bigotry. ; Self-sufficiency , security ; `` Self-sufficiency and spiritual and emotional security were our tools to carve out and secure freedom , '' he added . `` Those who attempt to capture the daily counseling , oversight , common sense and vision of my grandparents in a governmental program are engaging in sheer folly . '' ; The very beliefs that have brought Thomas to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court make him suspect to black political activists , veterans of the struggle to make government accountable for the wrongs done to blacks. ; Yet as Washington Post journalist Juan Williams has pointed out , Thomas is firmly grounded in the black intellectual tradition of Booker T. Washington , who advocated education , self-reliance and mutual support as the principal means of advancement. ; Clarence Thomas was born June 23 , 1948 , in Pinpoint , Ga. , a town in the marshes near Savannah . His mother , Leola , 18 at the time , lived in a house that had no plumbing. ; Before Thomas ' second birthday , his father moved to the North and left the family behind . His mother remarried , and her second husband did not want the children of her first marriage. ; Taken in by grandparents ; At age 7 , Thomas was sent to live with his grandparents . His grandfather , Myers Anderson , had little formal schooling . But life had taught him a lot. ; `` He could barely read and write -- read enough to read the Bible , '' Thomas said in a 1983 interview with the Washington Post . `` But he was a tough old man . '' ; He elaborated in the Heritage Foundation paper : `` Of course , I thought my grandparents were too rigid and their expectations were too high . I also thought they were mean at times ... . The most compassionate thing they did for us was teach us how to fend for ourselves in a hostile environment . '' ; But the world that lay beyond the confines of poverty and segregation was not totally closed to Thomas . His grandfather , a Catholic , enrolled him in an all-black school run by the church . On Monday , Thomas also made sure to thank `` the nuns . '' ; As a young man , he wanted to become a priest . In 1967 , he was accepted at the all-white Immaculate Conception Seminary in Conception Junction , Mo. . He was in for a shock . Other seminarians referred to him as the `` black spot on a white horse . '' Disgusted , he left at the end of his first year. ; Flirts with ` black power ' ; Thomas went on to attend Holy Cross College in Worcester , Mass. . In the 1960s , he flirted with the politics of `` black power '' and considered himself a follower of Malcolm X . But his true interest was in the law . He received his law degree from Yale University in 1974. ; As a young lawyer , Thomas worked in the office of Missouri Attorney General John C. Danforth . He later joined Monsanto Co. ; Thomas ' introduction to Washington came in 1979 . By then , Danforth was a Republican senator . Thomas , a former Democrat , joined his staff as a legislative assistant. ; In 1982 , after a year as assistant education secretary for civil rights , Thomas was named by President Reagan to lead the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. ; His tenure at the commission , which investigates discrimination complaints , was controversial . Critics said the agency went soft under Thomas . Abandoning support for hiring goals and timetables , Thomas focused on resolving thousands of individual discrimination complaints . He took credit for improving efficiency. ; When President Bush nominated Thomas to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia , a steppingstone to the Supreme Court , a contentious confirmation process was forecast . But the hearings went smoothly , perhaps because Thomas was never among the Reagan administration 's most outspoken critics of civil rights . He took his seat on the appeals court in March 1990. ; Thomas , who lives in suburban Virginia , is married and has a son. ; `` In my view , '' he said of his life Monday , `` only in America could this have been possible . ''
extractive_keyphrases: clarence thomas grandparents black power
abstractive_keyphrases: hard work discipline u.s. supreme court