Clarence & Ginni Thomas' Path To Power

Fresh Air

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4.3 • 36.1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 May 2023

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

As controversy swirls around Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni over financial benefits they received for years from a Texas billionaire, we look at the formative influences on the Washington power couple. Filmmaker Michael Kirk's FRONTLINE PBS documentary examines Clarence Thomas's early years, where he endured poverty, hardship and discrimination in the Jim Crow South. After a period as a Black Power activist in college, he began to criticize affirmative action and build ties with conservative Republicans, leading eventually to his seat on the Supreme Court. He teamed up with and married Ginni Lamp, who grew up surrounded by far-Right conservatives. Kirk's documentary is Clarence and Ginni Thomas: Politics, Power and the Supreme Court.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is the most
0:06.0	senior member of the conservative supermajority that now dominates the court, giving him a level
0:11.1	of influence he'd never seen in his 32 years as an associate justice. But controversy has swirled
0:17.4	around Thomas, and his wife Jenny in recent weeks, with revelations by the investigative
0:22.0	new site pro-publica that a conservative Texas billionaire has lavished Thomas with expensive
0:27.7	vacations and other financial benefits for many years, benefits that were never reported on Thomas's
0:33.8	financial disclosure forms. Those benefits included trips on private jets and a luxury yacht,
0:40.0	the purchase of, and renovations to the home Clarence Thomas's mother lives in, and private school
0:45.5	tuition for a grand nephew of Clarence Thomas. Our guest today is veteran filmmaker Michael Kirk,
0:51.5	who's the director of co-writer and co-producer of a new frontline documentary about the lives and
0:56.8	formative influences on Clarence and Jenny Thomas and their path to power in Washington.
1:02.9	Michael Kirk was the original senior producer of the PBS Frontline documentary series in the 1980s.
1:08.8	He's written and directed more than 100 hours of frontline documentaries, and is one for
1:13.7	Peabody Awards, for DuPont Columbia Awards, two George Polk Awards, and 16 Emmy Awards. His new
1:21.2	documentary titled Clarence and Jenny Thomas, Politics, Power, and the Supreme Court,
1:26.7	is available to stream for free on YouTube, Frontlines, website, and in the PBS app.
1:32.3	Michael Kirk, welcome back to Fresh Air. It's great to be here, Dave. Thanks for having me.
1:37.8	So let's talk about the early life of Clarence Thomas. It's hard to witness the hardship that he
1:44.5	suffered as a child and not have some sympathy for him. He was born in Penn Point, Georgia. Tell
1:51.0	us about the community and his relationship with his family in those early years.
1:55.6	Penn Point is on the outskirts of Savannah, Georgia. This is Savannah, Georgia, in the 1950s, as Clarence
2:05.9	growing up, very Jim Crow South, very racist undercurrents in everything Clarence would have done
	...

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