OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
There is more to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas than his job and we have discovered what one of those things is recently.
On Saturday, Emily Miller managed to grab a photo of the Justice as he was with other volunteers assisting Wreaths Across America lay Christmas wreaths at the graves of fallen military who are buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
volunteers every year at Arlington National Cemetery for #wreathsacrossamerica to honor those who have the ultimate sacrifice,” she said on Twitter.
“Justice Clarence Thomas does #WreathsAcrossAmerica [to] honor the fallen and spend time supporting Gold Star families at Arlington. Show respect for those of them reading this thread in your replies,” she said.
Justice Clarence Thomas does #WreathsAcrossAmerica fo honor the fallen and spend time supporting Gold Star families at Arlington. Show respect for those of them reading this thread in your replies.
— Emily Miller (@emilymiller) December 18, 2022
In 2013 the Justice was spotted helping to clean Arlington cemetery after the Christmas holiday.
“Thousands of volunteers braved the rainy weather, Saturday January 24th 2015, to help clean up more than 200,000 wreaths throughout Arlington National Cemetery. In this photo Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas lends a hand,” the description on Creative Commons reads, though the date on the photo is 2013.
The organization Thomas was volunteering for has grown in size and influence since the effort first began in 1992.
“In 2007, the Worcester family, along with veterans, and other groups and individuals who had helped with their annual veterans wreath ceremony in Arlington, formed Wreaths Across America, a non-profit 501-(c)(3) organization, to continue and expand this effort, and support other groups around the country who wanted to do the same,” the group’s website says.
“In 2008, over 300 locations held wreath-laying ceremonies in every state, Puerto Rico and 24 overseas cemeteries. Over 100,000 wreaths were placed on veterans’ graves. Over 60,000 volunteers participated. And that year, December 13, 2008 was unanimously voted by the US Congress as ‘Wreaths Across America Day,’” the group added.
By “2014, Wreaths Across America and its national network of volunteers laid over 700,000 memorial wreaths at 1,000 locations in the United States and beyond, including ceremonies at the Pearl Harbor Memorial, as well as Bunker Hill, Valley Forge and the sites if the September 11 tragedies. This was accomplished with help from 2,047 sponsorship groups, corporate contributions, and donations of trucking, shipping, and thousands of helping hands. The organization’s goal of covering Arlington National Cemetery was met in 2014 with the placement of 226,525 wreaths,” the group said.
It comes weeks after former Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace attacked the Justice on his new HBO Max show “Who’s Talking To Chris Wallace?” when he interviewed Professor Anita Hill about her accusations of sexual harassment against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Wallace accused the Supreme Court Justice of playing “the race card” and said he “played it hard.”
“Right. Okay. Well, Clarence Thomas responded, and I think it’s fair to say that he played the race card, and he played it hard. Again, take a look,” the host said before playing a clip of Justice Thomas speaking at the hearings.
“This is a circus, so national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, as far as I’m concerned, it is a high tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves,” the Justice said in the clip.
“But what struck in addition to that, what struck millions of people who were riveted to the television, and I can’t overstate what a big cultural event this was, was the way you were treated by the 14 white men, Republicans and Democrats,” Wallace said.
“Who were the Senate Judiciary Committee? Let’s take a look at some of that,” he said before playing another clip of senators speaking during the hearings.
You testified this morning in response to Senator Biden that the most embarrassing question involved this not too bad. Women’s large breasts. That’s a word we use all the time. All we’ve heard for 103 days is about a most remarkable man. It seems to me it didn’t really intend to kill him. But you might have…are you a scorned woman, do you have a martyr complex?
CNN's Chris Wallace Tells Anita Hill That Clarence Thomas 'Played The Race Card And He Played It Hard' At Confirmation Hearing https://t.co/NGDIvyzkie via @mediaite pic.twitter.com/6FADnNd8hd
— Tommy moderna-vaX-Topher (@tommyxtopher) December 4, 2022
“When you watch Thomas, and then you watch those senators, what are your thoughts?” the host said.
“Well there are two things with Thomas, it was the idea that he could play the race card as the victim against a black woman who will, you know, came from the same history whose family had been threatened with lynching,” Hill said.
“Real lynching, not high tech lynching whatever that was supposed to mean, and that he could be successful.
“That in a sense, he was attempting to alienate me from black people that sort of take overweigh any kind of, you know, respect or any kind of sympathy that black people would have for me,” she said.
“And that’s really difficult because we know now that there was a whole history of sexual violation of African American women that didn’t get in, in the discussion at all.
“That wasn’t part of the discussion.
“I don’t think the Senate committee could have heard that. They understood what happened to black man, and the reality and brutality of lynching,” the professor said.
“But I don’t think they had a clue about the experiences of black women.
“And that, to me, says that the 14 men who were there should not have been leading a discussion.
“They should not they didn’t have any idea of what they were even talking about,” she said.
