On Oct. 11, 1991, University of Oklahoma law professor Anita F. Hill testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about her experience of being sexually harassed by Judge Clarence Thomas, who was then a nominee for the Supreme Court. During the hours-long testimony, the all-white male committee did everything it could to shame and discredit Hill, even going so far as to suggest that she may have had a mental illness. In the end, Thomas was ultimately confirmed. But Hill’s testimony paved the way, not only for a record number of women to run for office the following year, but for nationwide conversations about sexual harassment in the workplace.
On the 27th anniversary of Hill’s testimony and in the wake of the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, two Daily Kos staffers, Kelly Macías and Jen Hayden, offered their reflections on how Hill’s bravery in coming forward about her experience changed their lives.
Kelly Macías
I was 13 years old and a freshman at an all-girls high school in Baltimore during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. I remember there being a television in our Spanish class and it was tuned to the hearings. I watched Hill testify live and I was immediately drawn in by her demeanor. Strong, poised, and confident, she reminded me a lot of my mother who was only two years older than her. At that time, I did not know that Hill was a Yale-educated lawyer and a law professor. I did not know that black women could be such things. Though my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother were all working women, none of them had gone to college. So it makes sense that I would immediately classify Hill in the same vein as I did the other black women in my life—strong women who worked themselves to the bone in largely support or administrative roles who made sure everything around them functioned properly but who were never officially “the boss.”
Later, I would go on to become the first woman in my family to go to college, graduate school, and earn a terminal degree. My youngest female cousin, born the same year that Hill testified, would go on to attend Yale Law School. I cannot help but make the link between those achievements and Anita Hill’s testimony. Though I didn’t know it at the time, I’m clear now that Hill’s story being put front and center across America’s televisions made it possible for subsequent generations of black girls to see themselves and dream big in ways that hadn’t previously been possible.
Like Hill, I would go on to experience sexual harassment and abuse inside and outside of the workplace. Much of it, but not all, was at the hands of black men. I often think about how part of the reason that many men doubted Hill’s credibility was because she and Thomas are both black. Just like the “boys will be boys” motto we heard Republican men use over and over again to justify Kavanaugh’s high school behavior, among many black people there is an assumption that overt sexual banter (however inappropriate and unwanted) is a common way of interacting between black men and women. Lawyer and civil rights scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (who was also a part of Hill’s legal support team in 1991) recently wrote in the New York Times about how pervasive this idea was among black people at the time. To them, it was Hill, not Thomas, who was lying—not because they thought that Thomas hadn’t made sexual advances toward Hill but instead because they believed that this was simply not considered harassment.
Many blacks did believe that Judge Thomas likely said those things, but like Dr. Patterson, chastised Ms. Hill for bringing these matters into the public domain. To him, Judge Thomas’s repeated pornography-laden harassment against an “aloof” Anita Hill may have looked like a textbook case of workplace harassment to a white, puritanical feminist eye. But it was, in fact, a down-home style of courting that affirmed their shared racial background. It was Anita Hill who was being uppity, who deigned to think that her workplace rights had been denied.
It is because of Hill that I understand that these behaviors must not be normalized, no matter the race of the abuser—at work or anywhere else. Hill’s testimony might have seemed radical at the time (and it certainly was) and yet it was actually in line with a long tradition of black women’s activism against rape and sexual violence. Dating back to the 1940s, black women have been publicly organizing to stop rape and sexual abuse, which routinely occurred at the hands of white men from slavery through the Jim Crow era. These women did not keep their stories a secret. Instead, they testified publicly about their assaults—in courtrooms, newsletters, books, churches and congressional hearings.
In 1944, after Recy Taylor, a mother and sharecropper in Alabama was kidnapped and raped by a gang of white men, the NAACP sent a seasoned activist and investigator to look into the case. Though it was 10 years before the country and world would learn her name, she would go on to be considered the mother of the civil rights movement. Her name was Rosa Parks. And it is her anti-rape activism along with that of many other black women that became the blueprint for the movement. By coming forward in 1991, as well as her subsequent years of women’s rights activism, Anita Hill has earned her place in history just like the many black women before her who said no to sexual harassment and abuse.
It is likely because of Hill that when I entered the workforce full-time, nearly eight years after her testimony, almost every place that I have been employed has had an anti-harassment policy. It is also because of her that I have refused to remain silent about my own experiences as a sexual assault survivor and have been talking about them for the past 20 years. I do not believe there is shame in being a survivor and I don’t allow silence to have any power over my life. As Hill said during her testimony, “It would have been more comfortable to remain silent … but when I was asked by a representative of this committee to report my experience, I felt that I had to tell the truth. I could not keep silent.”
Jen Hayden
In 1990, I was a high school senior with a full-time job working as a secretary. I worked in the management office of the local mall and received school credits in a business class that went toward graduation. I was harassed almost daily in this job, primarily by local police and private security working in the mall, most of whom were police officers in nearby small towns, waiting for their break in higher paying city jobs. My desk was located in the same room as the coffeemaker, in the office next to the security office. These officers spent their breaks sitting at the chair in front of my desk, drinking coffee. One officer in particular relentlessly made me feel uneasy, always asking probing questions about dating and my sex life.
He was in his 40s, I was 17-18 years-old. I was always trying to shut it down. I couldn't go anywhere. I was responsible for the office and we were almost always alone in the office, which was located down a long hallway away from the hustle and bustle of the mall. I felt trapped. One night I was leaving the office, going out the back door, down a darkened service hallway, the only way out of the locked mall. To my shock, a door flew open and two men, one police officer and one mall security guard, grabbed me, violently dragging me into the security office while I protested in all ways: screaming, physically trying to fight them off and get away. During the struggle, one police officer grabbed my arm/hand and used a pressure point technique that caused such severe pain that I immediately dropped to my knees. Once on my knees and crying out in pain, they quickly grabbed my arms and twisted them behind my back, locking on handcuffs in a split second. They dragged me to a nearby metal desk and handcuffed me to it, turned out the lights and shut the door. Like, Dr. Ford, I will never forget their raucous laughter trailing off down the hallway. I was high school girl and two grown men, both over 40 years old, violently attacked me in what they later called a “joke.” Eventually they returned to uncuff me and let me in on the “joke.” Ha ha, right?
I left in tears. I was in pain. I almost wrecked my car on the way home when I hit a median in the parking lot. I told no one. I dared not tell my mother, I knew she would be up there in a minute in their faces and I surmised that she would probably be the one who landed in jail. I couldn't quit the job, I needed the credits to graduate. Who was I going to complain to? The police?
In fact, that was my third job in the mall between roughly 1986-1990. I had already endured sexual harassment in all three jobs, beginning around 15 years old at my first job, where I made 5,000-calorie (give or take) cinnamon rolls. I will never forget the 23-year-old manager of the athletic shoe store next door who would always wave me into the store while I was walking around on break. He frequently tried to lure me into the back of the store where he often had a stash of beer. Inevitably, he would begin saying sexual things to me. He eventually moved onto my friend, getting her drunk in a local park. Looking back, I want to scream. I was 15 years old. Today my heart races as I recall these days and I realize that teenage girl is still screaming inside of me.
After leaving those jobs and going off to college, like most Americans, I found myself glued to the television only a year later when Anita Hill sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee and calmly, judiciously recalled the harassment and embarrassment she endured while working with Clarence Thomas. It was an epiphany for me. I had been trained to simply tolerate this kind of harassment. After all, boys will be boys! It was the first time I really remember someone saying this behavior was wrong and shouldn't be tolerated in the workplace. Watching Anita Hill, I sobbed. I cried for the way she was being treated in that hearing. I cried for the way she was routinely humiliated by Clarence Thomas. I cried because I was furious. I cried because I wished with all my might I could roll back time and report those men who attacked me. Because Anita Hill was giving me strength. I vowed that I would NEVER stay quiet again.
In fact, many of the lessons learned in those days are fueling me today. It's true those old men went ahead and confirmed Clarence Thomas, just as many of those same (now even older) men confirmed Brett Kavanaugh, but things have changed as a result of Anita Hill's testimony. Companies began implementing sexual harassment policies where they didn't exist before. Millions of women like me saw her testimony and said, "no more." The harassment in the workplace didn't end completely in the next two decades, but the ripple effects of Anita Hill's testimony and bravery continue to positively impact the workplace today. Her bravery continues to ripple inside of me. Today, more than ever, I am so very grateful to Anita Hill, a true American hero.
How has Anita Hill’s testimony impacted your life? We invite you to share your reflections in the comments below. And join us in the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #ThankYouAnita.