On this day in 1991, Anita Hill's bravery changed the world and confirmed her place in history
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On Oct. 11, 1991, University of Oklahoma law professor Anita F. Hill testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about her experience of being sexually harassed by Judge Clarence Thomas, who was then a nominee for the Supreme Court. During the hours-long teOn this day in 1991, Anita Hill's bravery changed the world and confirmed her place in history
On Oct. 11, 1991, University of Oklahoma law professor Anita F. Hill testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about her experience of being sexually harassed by Judge Clarence Thomas, who was then a nominee for the Supreme Court. During the hours-long testimony, the all-white male committee did everything it could to shame and discredit Hill, even going so far as to suggest that she may have had a mental illness. In the end, Thomas was ultimately confirmed. But Hill’s testimony paved the way, not only for a record number of women to run for office the following year, but for nationwide conversations about sexual harassment in the workplace. On the 27th anniversary of Hill’s testimony and in the wake of the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, two Daily Kos staffers, Kelly Macías and Jen Hayden, offered their reflections on how Hill’s bravery in coming forward about her experience changed their lives. Kelly Macías I was 13 years old and a freshman at an all-girls high school in Baltimore during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. I remember there being a television in our Spanish class and it was tuned to the hearings. I watched Hill testify live and I was immediately drawn in by her demeanor. Strong, poised, and confident, she reminded me a lot of my mother who was only two years older than her. At that time, I did not know that Hill was a Yale-educated lawyer and a law professor. I did not know that black women could be such things. Though my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother were all working women, none of them had gone to college. So it makes sense that I would immediately classify Hill in the same vein as I did the other black women in my life—strong women who worked themselves to the bone in largely support or administrative roles who made sure everything around them functioned properly but who were never officially “the boss.” Later, I would go on to become the first woman in my family to go to college, graduate school, and earn a terminal degree. My youngest female cousin, born the same year that Hill testified, would go on to attend Yale Law School. I cannot help but make the link between those achievements and Anita Hill’s testimony. Though I didn’t know it at the time, I’m clear now that Hill’s story being put front and center across America’s televisions made it possible for subsequent generations of black girls to see themselves and dream big in ways that hadn’t previously been possible. Like Hill, I would go on to experience sexual harassment and abuse inside and outside of the workplace. Much of it, but not all, was at the hands of black men. I often think about how part of the reason that many men doubted Hill’s credibility was because she and Thomas are both black. Just like the “boys will be boys” motto we heard Republican men use over and over again to justify Kavanaugh’s high school behavior, among many black people there is an assumption that overt sexual banter (however inappropriate and unwanted) is a common way of interacting between black men and women. Lawyer and civil rights scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (who was also a part of Hill’s legal support team in 1991) recently wrote in the New York Times about how pervasive this idea was among black people at the time. To them, it was Hill, not Thomas, who was lying—not because they thought that Thomas hadn’t made sexual advances toward Hill but instead because they believed that this was simply not considered harassment. Read more