Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [135]
Though the impact of the hearing of 1991 on my own life is of course profound, that is not what made this event significant. What made the hearing significant is the reverberations felt in a number of communities: the African American community, the community of all women, the academic community including my university and law school community, and finally my community of relatives and friends—all communities in which I have some involvement. I measure the importance of the hearings on how it changed—if in some cases only in terms of the dialogue—these communities and my relationship to them.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Notwithstanding its familiarity, the drive to the law school from my home, even with its four stop signs, is too brief and distracting to provide much time for reflection. In the aftermath of the raucous days surrounding the hearing, the halls of the school portray the kind of calm that exists only after a period of chaos. But underneath that surface the chaos continued. My requisite cup of coffee in hand, I pause at my office door for inspiration from the quote I have displayed there for years. “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.… You must do the thing that you cannot do.”
I clipped these words of Eleanor Roosevelt together with her photo from a 1987 calendar which depicted the words of a different “peacemaker” each month of that year. Roosevelt’s words speak directly to the law school experience, an experience which tries most students and some faculty. Originally, I chose this quote to allay the fears of my first-year law students. But for years these words had accurately applied to my own challenges as well, and never more so than in 1991. Each day as I entered my office, they provided me with a bit of determination to face my own fears. For just as the actions of the Judiciary Committee had issued a challenge to other women, it challenged me as well. And inside my office, just beyond the quotation, new demands awaited my response.
I open the door to my office and am reminded of the comments from students about the calming effect of its blue walls. The colors and textures of the room, the Wedgwood blue of the walls, the textbooks impressively bound in a fabric intent upon resembling leather, the soft tans and browns in the painting of an African woman and her child, even the wood of the oak desk, have a calming, familiar effect. They contrast the piles of mostly unopened mail that amassed daily. The letters I received had become priceless to me. As I struggled to understand my situation, each offered the promise of new insight. Each day I set about to read at least a few, treating each like the precious item any one might be. By this time the trays of letters and cards arriving daily totaled about six hundred. They were coming with increased frequency. It was October 24. I woke that morning to the news that Clarence Thomas had been sworn in as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. But the event had little real consequence in my life. For a moment the thought of it stung me lightly but when I arrived in my office to the mail, the faxes, the telegrams, and the ringing telephone, it did not matter.
Careful not to spill my coffee, I sit at my desk and clear off a small space. On this day, I discover a missive that fulfilled the promise.
Dear Professor Hill,
Don’t believe the things they say to you about bringing shame on a black man. They said those same things to me when I divorced my husband. Some men bring shame to themselves by the way that they behave. You did the right thing. Hold your head up.
I was at once consoled and dismayed by this letter. Though happy for the affirmation that I had done the right thing, the accuracy of her observation about the reaction from the black community saddened me. I was just beginning to feel the toll that that reaction would take on me.
Growing up in Oklahoma, I was always keenly aware of my race