Encyclopedia article about Clarence Thomas who was sworn in as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991. He is the youngest member of the court and only its second African American member, after Thurgood Marshall, whose seat he filled. Thomas grew up near Savannah, Georgia and was raised in a Catholic household. With the early ambition of joining the priesthood, he attended a black the Immaculate Conception Seminary in Missouri, leaving after hearing a fellow classmate celebrating the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. He later attended Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts and Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut.

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Cite as: "Clarence Thomas (b. 1948)," New Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved [date]: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org.

Forms part of the New Georgia Encyclopedia.