ANGELA WRIGHT
Angela Wright, who served as public relations director at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (which investigates sexual harassment accusations) during Thomas’ lengthy time as chairman in 1984, told Senate investigators stories of his sexual harassment.
According to the transcript of her Senate hearing, Thomas once asked her, “What size are your breasts?” as she walked into an EEOC class with him.
A former EEOC speechwriter supported her claim, telling investigators that Wright had become more nervous with Thomas due to his remarks regarding her attractiveness.
Wright, on the other hand, had issues that made Democrats on the committee concerned. She had been terminated twice before, once by Thomas and once by a member of Congress. She had also resigned from a third government position, accusing her employer of ineptitude and bigotry.
Biden issued a subpoena for Wright to testify at the hearing because he was concerned about her integrity. Instead, transcripts of Wright’s and her corroborator’s interviews were simply filed into the record, garnering barely little public notice.
Angela Wright is a writer and editor.
SUKARI HARDNETT
Sukari Hardnett, who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 in a sworn declaration that she had been subjected to Thomas’ “unpleasant” attention.
Hardnett was ready to testify in favor of Professor Anita Hill in 1991, who, like Hardnett, was a former employee of Thomas’ when he was head of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Hill, whose time at the EEOC did not coincide with Hardnett’s, had accused Thomas of sexual harassment, including describing “acts he had seen in pornographic films” and graphically describing “his own sexual prowess.”
Hardnett noted that, although she did not consider herself a victim of sexual harassment by Thomas, the EEOC was extremely sexualized during his tenure, especially for young black women. Hardnett claimed that Thomas’ sworn denials that this was the case were fraudulent.
“To maintain that Clarence Thomas’ office was untainted by any sexuality and permeated by loving, nurturing, but asexual concern is simply a lie,” Hardnett wrote. “Women know when there are sexual dimensions to the attention they are receiving. And there was never any doubt about that dimension in Clarence Thomas’ office. I know it. Clarence Thomas knows it. And I know he knows it because he discussed some of the females in his office with me.”
When Hardnett pushed on a transfer from Thomas’ office, she said that she “paid the price as an outcast” for the rest of her tenure at the EEOC, a fate she claimed was shared by others in the office.
“You were barred from entering his office and treated as an outcast or, worse, a leper with whom contact was taboo,” Hardnett wrote.
Biden, then chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, presided over the confirmation hearings, which were marred by the all-male committee members’ confusion over the issue of workplace sexual misconduct, as well as sexist attacks on Hill from Republican senators who accused her of “flat-out perjury” and suggested that her testimony was the “product of fantasy” based on the film The Exorcist.
Of course, Hardnett was not present. Biden had barred her and Angela Wright, another woman who had accused Thomas of sexual harassment, from testifying in favor of Hill before the committee. Hardnett admitted that Biden’s action was a symptom of the period, but it was nonetheless wrong.
“Because I worked directly for Clarence Thomas, I had hoped that I could verify and support and affirm what Anita Hill was saying,” Hardnett stated.
“I do believe that the country, as a whole, could not really deal with the issue of sexual harassment realistically,” Hardnett stated. “Since that time, we as a nation have become—well, most of us—have become much more aware of just how damaging that type of behavior is to our population, to our nation.”
Asked if she felt that Biden had learned from his own mistakes, Hardnett sighed.
“All I can say is that I hope so. I hope so,” Hardnett said. “We will never be able to revisit that opportunity.”
“I think that things could have been done by him,” Hardnett said. “The hearings into allegations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas were compromised, I think, for a number of reasons.”
Hardnett has her own firm in Washington DC.