Anita Hill

After extensive debate, the United States Senate confirmed Thomas to the Supreme Court by a vote of 52–48, the narrowest margin since the 19th century.

Members questioned Hill's credibility after the timeline of her events came into question.

They mentioned the time delay of ten years between the alleged behavior by Thomas and Hill's accusations, and observed that Hill had followed Thomas to a second job and later had personal contacts with Thomas, including giving him a ride to an airport—behavior which they said would be inexplicable if Hill's allegations were true.

Hill countered that she had come forward because she felt an obligation to share information on the character and actions of a person who was being considered for the Supreme Court.

She testified that after leaving the EEOC, she had had two "inconsequential" phone conversations with Thomas, and had seen him personally on two occasions, once to get a job reference and the second time when he made a public appearance in Oklahoma where she was teaching.

Anita Faye Hill (born July 30, 1956) is an American lawyer, educator and author.

She is a professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at Brandeis University and a faculty member of the university's Heller School for Social Policy and Management.

Hill graduated from Morris High School, Oklahoma in 1973, where she was class valedictorian.

Hill received her bachelor's degree in psychology in 1977 from Oklahoma State University.

In 1980, she earned her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut.

Hill was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1980 and began her law career as an associate with the Washington, D.C. firm of Wald, Harkrader & Ross.

In 1981, she became an attorney-adviser to Clarence Thomas, who was then the Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.

When Thomas became chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 1982, Hill served as his assistant, leaving the job in 1983.

Hill then became an assistant professor at the Evangelical Christian O. W. Coburn School of Law at Oral Roberts University where she taught from 1983 to 1986.

In 1986, she joined the faculty at the University of Oklahoma College of Law where she taught commercial law and contracts.

In 1989, she became the first tenured African American professor at OU.

She became a national figure in 1991 when she accused U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, her supervisor at the United States Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, of sexual harassment.

Anita Hill was born to a family of farmers in Lone Tree, Oklahoma, the youngest of Albert and Erma Hill's 13 children.

Her family came from Arkansas, where her maternal grandfather Henry Eliot and all of her great-grandparents had been born into slavery.

Hill was raised in the Baptist faith.

In 1991, President George H. W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, a federal circuit judge, to succeed retiring Associate Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Senate hearings on his confirmation were initially completed with Thomas's good character being presented as a primary qualification for the high court because he had only been a judge for slightly more than one year.

There had been little organized opposition to Thomas's nomination, and his confirmation seemed assured until a report of a private interview of Hill by the FBI was leaked to the press.

The hearings were then reopened, and Hill was called to publicly testify.

Hill said on October 11, 1991, in televised hearings that Thomas had sexually harassed her while he was her supervisor at the Department of Education and the EEOC.

When questioned on why she followed Thomas to the second job after he had already allegedly harassed her, she said working in a reputable position within the civil rights field had been her ambition.

The position was appealing enough to inhibit her from going back into private practice with her previous firm.

She said that she only realized later in her life that the choice had represented poor judgment on her part, but that "at that time, it appeared that the sexual overtures... had ended."

According to Hill, Thomas asked her out socially many times during her two years of employment as his assistant, and after she declined his requests, he used work situations to discuss sexual subjects and push advances.

"He spoke about... such matters as women having sex with animals and films showing group sex or rape scenes," she said, adding that on several occasions Thomas graphically described "his own sexual prowess" and the details of his anatomy.

Hill also recounted an instance in which Thomas examined a can of Coke on his desk and asked, "Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?"

During the hearing, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch implied that "Hill was working in tandem with 'slick lawyers' and interest groups bent on destroying Thomas's chances to join the court."

Thomas said he had considered Hill a friend whom he had helped at every turn, so when accusations of harassment came from her they were particularly hurtful and he said, "I lost the belief that if I did my best, all would work out."

Four female witnesses waited in the wings to support Hill's credibility, but they were not called, due to what the Los Angeles Times described as a private, compromise deal between Republicans and the Senate Judiciary Committee chair, Democrat Joe Biden.

Hill agreed to take a polygraph test.

While senators and other authorities observed that polygraph results cannot be relied upon and are inadmissible in courts, Hill's results did support her statements.

Thomas did not take a polygraph test.

He made a vehement and complete denial, saying that he was being subjected to a "high-tech lynching for uppity blacks" by white liberals who were seeking to block a black conservative from taking a seat on the Supreme Court.

She left the university in 1996 due to ongoing calls for her resignation that began after her 1992 testimony.

In 1998, she became a visiting scholar at Brandeis University and, in 2015, a university professor at the school.