Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [0]
Copyright © 1997 by Anita F. Hill
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by
Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York,
and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada
Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the
United States by Doubleday in 1997. The Anchor Books
edition is published by arrangement with Doubleday, a
division of Random House, Inc.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition
of this book as follows:
Hill, Anita.
Speaking truth to power / Anita F. Hill.
p. cm.
1. Hill, Anita. 2. Women lawyers—United States—Biography.
3. Sexual harassment of women—Law and legislation—
United States.
I. Title.
KF373.H46A3 1997
340′.092—dc21
[B] 97-1316
eISBN: 978-0-307-77966-3
www.anchorbooks.com
v3.1
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
WITH LOVE AND GRATITUDE
TO MY PARENTS
ERMA AND ALBERT HILL
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part Two
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Part Three
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Epilogue
Open Letter to the 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
Midway through the morning of my testimony at the Thomas confirmation hearing, Senator Howell Heflin, Democrat of Alabama, summed up the Republican attack on my credibility. A former state supreme court judge and trial attorney, Senator Heflin appeared to be deliberating aloud as he explained his approach.
“I, and I suppose every member of this committee, have to come down to the ultimate question of who is telling the truth. My experience as a lawyer and a judge is that you listen to all the testimony and then you try to determine the motivation for the one that is not telling the truth.
“Now, in trying to determine whether you are telling falsehoods or not, I have got to determine what your motivation might be. Are you a scorned woman?” he asked.
“No,” I said, a bit surprised by the line of questioning but certain of my answer.
“Do you have a martyr complex?” With his heavy accent and deliberate pacing, “martyr” came out sounding like “mah’duh.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Maybe she is a martyr and doesn’t know it,” someone behind me snickered.
“Do you have a militant attitude relative to the area of civil rights?”
“No, I don’t.” I was not certain what he meant, but I knew I was not a militant in the way the term was defined in the 1960s.
“The reality of where you are today is rather dramatic,” Senator Heflin said. “Did you take, as Senator Biden asked you, all steps that you knew how to take to prevent being in the witness chair today?”
“Yes, I did. Everything that I knew to do, I did.” I felt like a child who was being chastised for wandering into traffic.
Senator Heflin’s questions revealed a truth about the hearing. Generally, questions about motive are raised in the context of a criminal trial. They are designed to elicit the impetus for a criminal act. The prosecution presents the theory that the accused committed the crime out of greed, rage, or passion. The defense attorney attempts to show that none of these factors existed in the case. Heflin’s questions revealed that I was being treated as a defendant. The Republicans had accused me of lying about Clarence Thomas’ sexual harassment of me when I worked for him ten years earlier. They effectively shifted the hearing on whether Thomas was suitable to serve on the Court to a hearing on whether I could rebut their presumption that I was lying. Primed by all the rhetoric before the hearing,