Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [110]
Despite my own isolation, the lawyers and other volunteers were working to establish some way of responding to the attack. Clearly, to go on simply denying the negative assertions of the senators was to give them a credibility they did not deserve and to allow their allegations to set the terms of the discussion. As much as my attorneys, Emma Coleman Jordan, Sue Ross, and Charles Ogletree, had tried to protect my testimony in case I was called again, and as eloquently as they had spoken on my behalf, I could no longer remain outside of the fray of the events. We needed some positive act in order to reverse the downward turn of the process, and the circumstances demanded that I be the one to take it. With some hesitance in his voice, Ogletree reminded me that I had told the committee that I would be willing to take a polygraph examination. “Would you still be willing to do so?” he questioned. At that moment I was thinking like a client and not like a lawyer. Had I been a lawyer advising a client in a legal proceeding, I would have discouraged her from doing so, because of the risk of manipulation of the results. “Sure,” the client in me who wanted some exoneration responded readily.
Charles Ogletree arranged for the examination. He was thinking like the seasoned criminal lawyer he is, and thus was the one who had qualms about the decision to go forward with the polygraph examination. And as he would report to me afterward, he hardly slept on the Saturday night before the examination.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
On Sunday morning I dressed to go to an undisclosed location; to take an unfamiliar examination; to be administered by someone whom I did not know. I had taken many exams in my life—to enter college, law school, professional life. I had always prepared for the examination for weeks before taking them, but over the past few days I began to believe that life turns on the unanticipated—those things that we do not even contemplate and therefore cannot plan. That the credibility, reputation, and future that I had so thoughtfully planned for might turn on an examination which I had only the night before decided to take seemed ironic but fitting in light of the occurrences of the previous days.
I received three telephone calls before I left the hotel to take the examination. One was from Sonia Jarvis, who called to give me a scripture for my reading Sunday morning. The Reverend Beecher Hicks called to share a scripture with me as well and to pray with me. He and Reverend Harris, who had come by the caucus room to minister to my family, had graciously arranged to have cars to take my family to his church, the Metropolitan Baptist Church, a predominantly African American church in Washington, D.C. I was later relieved that my family not only enjoyed the sermon but was warmly received by the congregation.
After Thomas’ “high-tech lynching” comment and the charges of conspiracy, I worried that the manipulation of racial sentiments in the black community might be turned against my family. They were easily identifiable after their appearance on television on Friday and owing to a strong family resemblance. On Saturday, as they shopped in Georgetown, strangers asked their identity. The press had been following them, and my brother Ray says that he saw the same Secret Service man throughout the weekend at various spots throughout the city. But after their visit to the Metropolitan, where they were welcomed, my immediate concerns about their well-being were relieved.
The third call came from a group of friends, Ronald Allen and Gary Phillips, two law school classmates, and Keith Henderson. Ronald Allen had been involved in the hearings as a legal adviser to Judge Hoerchner.