But only at cspan do you get it straight from the source. No matter where youre from or where you stand on the issues, cspanis americas network. Unfiltered, unbiased , word for word. If it happens here or here or here or anywhere that matters. America is watching on cspan , powered by cable. Judge thomas, do you solemnlyswear to tell the truth,whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god. Please be seated. [music] when i was six i wandered through hungary and the east. Someplace in my life, the road split off. I had gone to the seminary, i had gone to all white schools. I was never going to be part of that world, never be white. The problem is i could never go back completely tothe world i came from. Were supposed to be revolutionaries. We work for anybody who was kind of in your face. I saw what i was lashing out at everysingle thing. And then id ask god if hed take it back idnever hate again and that was the beginning of a slow return to where i started. I want my candidate to unify our country. I was under constant attack, youre not really blackbecause youre not doing what we expect black people to do. I will nominate judgeClarence Thomas to serve as associate justice of the usSupreme Court. Thats when all heck broke loose. Judge thomas began to use work situations to discuss sex. We know whatsgoing on, this is the long wrong black guy, he has to be destroyed. It really didntmatter, what matters was what they want. Id rather die than withdrawfrom the process. I want to be able to say i lived up to my oath and did my best. What we just watching there . That was the trailer for a film called created equal, seClarence Thomas in his own words. Same title of the book. It was released in january 2020 with 110 theaters and it was then broadcast nationally on pbs in may, and then it was released digitally and its Still Available digitally through amazon and viewers can go to our website with a full list of how to watch it. And that film was based on a very long interview with Clarence Thomas. I think you could say he looked right at the camera to tell his story in his own words from its beginnings to today so i interviewed him for 24 hours over a fourmonth period and ginny and theyre the only interviews in the film and thats why Clarence Thomas in his own words. It was a 25 hour interview in a film so my coauthor of the book a longterm friend of the thomases had the idea that we should take some of f that material and put it in a book. The book is 95 percent new material but it follows the same pattern as the film. Tell the life story from the beginning and on to today. So i think this is an important moment for people to understand estes thomas and where he is and who he is as a person. What was it like trying to convince Supreme Courtjustice to sit down for 24 hours . It was not easy and it was the largest longest interview ever granted by any Supreme Court justice let alone one thats reluctant to be interviewed but the film evolved in at each stage and i was honest and open with him we were originally planning to do a traditional documentary, interview 15 people from all points of view. But i quickly realized that hihis voice would be lost. And he was the best color of his own story. This way he tells you what he thinks and you can accepted or rejected, this is why i think pbs was enthusiastic. It doesnt say this is the truth, it says this is theway Clarence Thomas saw his life and if you want to understand his reasons , for his Supreme Court rulings its worth understanding of who he is and where he comes from. So he followed the evolution and committed to doing the film and one of the things about Justice Thomas is can be very stubborn, when he believes in something he sticks with it and in sleight of temptations maybe he didnt stick with it and i should say and no editorial control so a lot of trust in the filmmaker and he didnt in fact see it until it was broadcast on pbs. You describe your coauthor described him as the greatest Supreme Court justice of alltime. That would be mark, i do not consider myself an expert onthe Supreme Court, on the documentary filmmaker. I think it is surely true that he is now one of the most, a Strong Influence on the Supreme Court. Many people call it the thomas court, obviously its the Roberts Court but he is perhaps the strongest influence at the moment and thats why its important for people to read the book and see the movie and understand them whatever their policies. We really one of the film to be on pbs because we wanted a broad swath of america to see him and understand him and we wantthat for the book itself. The beam that came out in the book and the interview is that Justice Thomas liked to take the longer view. I think thats true. We icall ourselves created equal because his life is really a star on the way he sees the declaration of independence, those Core Principles and how their realized in the constitution. I think you can understand it if you follow his life story and you do know this i think yourself, maybe not all your listeners. He was born in an area off the coast of georgia so english isnt his first language. His father leaves, and when hes about six or seven years old they moved to savannah and as he said he went from rural poverty to urban squalor. So in savanna she doesnt have enough money to give him food. Theyre hungry, theyre cold in the winter. She brings him to school and he leaves school and wanders the streets and after two years she realizes she cant take care of those kids and gives them to her father, her grandfather to raise and thats why his life turned around. The first thing his grandfather says is the vacation is over. What hvacation . Just an entire poverty but he gives them hard work and hes got to work after school, go to school every day. He gives them yardwork and he himself is functionally illiterate, less than a third grade education but he insists upon sending them to catholic school. In the segregated south it was an allblack school runby these irish nuns who also reflect those values discipline, hard work and a strong curriculum. Justice thomas arrived in that environment and a lot of people dont know he decided he wanted to be a priest and he enrolled in the seminary and went to the seminary and his grandfather was proud of him but it was a big financial commitment and then after two years in the seminary the seminary ishould say were all white seminaries. And there he started to experience some racism and it reached a peak in the 1968 in there watching tv when Martin Luther king jr. Is shot and one of the white seminarians says i hope that as ob dies and for Clarence Thomas. He felt the church wasnt doing enough in civil rights, that his grandfather was wrong about everything and he became in his own words and angry black man and became radicalized and said i didnt want to be a priest and his grandfather said if you can make your own decisions youre on your own, kicked him out of the house. The only father he ever knew really kicks him out, hes on his own. He has to go wherever he has a scholarship and there he continues to be a radical. He helped form the black Student Union and stages a walkout led byblack panthers to come to the state. You may remember this , i do. And the next in his life is working through that and coming back to his grandmothers values. And that reaches one of the key moments that matters when he goes to an antiwar demonstration in cambridge massachusetts and it turns into a riot and he gets swept up in the riot. They get liquor from the liquor store ahead of time and hes just caught up in mob mentality and he hates what hes become an even though hes still away from the church when he gets back the holy cross in the middle of the night he kneels in front of the chapel and says if god willtake anger out of my heart , i will change. At the beginning of his coming back his grandfather season and that plays out at Yale Law School and his early years working for then attorney general danforth of missouri. Finally he ends up working for reagan and thats his journey back. We tell that story and its a complicated story both in the book and in the film. But then once he becomes a public conservative black man and he is attacked by the media and he has to battle with the left, that reaches a peak or a first peek at least its a very contentious confirmation hearing and then on today on the court. Tell that story in the book. I should say we , let Clarence Thomas tell that story. You refer to that in the book as the radical years but you also bring up the theme or he brings up a theme of circumstances controlling you rather than you controlling circumstances. And thats something to be employed. I think that i think what he. He would say that he was blessed by having this core upbringing by his grandfather and his son. He would not have been who he is and he constantly is referencing how importantthey are to him. In the film hes talking about his grandfather in the book. There were pictures of thetwo of them and i think he feels that he was blessed in his circumstances. Other people might see it differently. He was born in dire poverty , he had many hardships and reversals so he i think he feels in a way blessed as well as challenged. But i think one of the things that Justice Thomass life is his resilience and coming back in the face of hardship and feeling basically blessed and thats i think an inspiring thing for all of us whatever our politics. Whats the role of ginni thomas in his life. We interviewed ginni. She really helped tell his story but he talks about marrying her and what she means to him and he calls her a gift from godand i think they are very close. I think that the confirmation battle, contentious confirmation battle they were not married that long pull them together to have to go through Something Like that together. I think that that made them one as shesaid. He in the book addressed his first marriage and his son jamaal. He references it a little bit. You can see in the film, i pressed him and he did not want to speak much about it so he speaks a little about it and we tell about it but he doesnt speak much. I think as a result of that marriage they had a child and she wanted him to raise the child and he raised his son as a asingle parent with not a huge salary in the 80s, not easy thing to do is this our first book . My first book, im a film maker and ive been making films for decades and we made 14, 15 films. Almost all of them broadcast nationally on pbs which we are grateful for. This is the first one weve chosen to turn into a film because they had this resource mark my coauthor was the originator of the idea. But i think of myself as a filmmaker rather than an author but i have to say theres something satisfying about seeing your name in a book. An actual physical book, not just an ebook. There is an ebook but theres something about seeing her name in a book that is really great. Michael pack is the author of created equal Clarence Thomas in his own words and hes president ofmanifold productions incorporated. We appreciate your being on book tv. Book tv every sunday on cspan2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books read at 8 pm eastern former republican South Carolina governor un Ambassador Nikki Haley shares her book if you want something done she talks about the women shes drawn inspiration from throughout her life. Then at 10 pm eastern on after words professor chris miller traces the history of Microchip Technology and how its become the most critically needed technology globally in his book war, hes interviewed by democratic congressman jim heinz. Watch book tv every sunday on cspan2 and find a full schedule or online anytime at cspan. Org. 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