>> ♪ To the tables down at Mory's ♪
♪ To the place where Louie dwells ♪
>> NARRATOR: After Holy Cross,
Clarence Thomas was off
to a very different world once again-- Yale Law School.
>> ♪ Sing the Whiffenpoofs assembled ♪
>> NARRATOR: It was a chance to leave Pin Point far behind,
defy his grandfather's prophecy,
and get positioned to make real money.
>> We know what the reputation of Yale is.
You got a network of folks in all walks of life
in the legal community,
and all you gotta say is, "Man, I'm a Yale alum,"
and bam, you got a job.
That was our perception.
>> He had thought, "Well, you know what?
"I'll just go, go make me a bunch of money,
maybe go to New York and be a lawyer."
(bell tolling)
>> NARRATOR: He and Kathy moved
into married student housing.
They made a connection with their neighbor.
>> When we were both in married student housing,
he set up his study room in what should have been,
you know, a joint storage room.
>> NARRATOR: His classmate, John Bolton...
(camera shutter clicking) ...would become U.N. ambassador,
undersecretary of state,
and national security adviser.
>> And we started talking
and talked for the next two years, basically.
And that's where we got to know each other.
>> NARRATOR: Over time, Thomas would open up to Bolton.
>> I don't think he was terribly happy at the law school.
Look, people at Yale Law School, generically speaking,
are a pretty arrogant group.
They think that they're going to rule the world.
For example, in the year ahead of us
were Bill and Hillary Clinton.
That was kind of the atmosphere.
I don't think Clarence came with that in mind for himself.
And I think it was kind of off-putting.
>> There are other Black students there, but again,
the Black students who are there,
like, he doesn't feel they are like him.
He's not part of the elite.
They're, in his mind, privileged kids, you know?
The sons and daughters of doctors and lawyers.
So he feels, again, like the outcast.
>> He believed that
people assumed he was there as a, as a beneficiary
of affirmative action, and it grated on him.
>> He has this feeling of,
"Oh, I'm around these White students"
who he senses question his presence at Yale.
"How is it that you-- not just you, Clarence Thomas--
"but you, all you Black students, are here?
"Is it because of merit
or is it because of affirmative action?"
There was one law professor, Ralph Winter,
who in a challenging way mentioned this,
"People don't think, you know, you deserve to be here."
That kind of thing.
And Thomas doesn't take it as a challenge,
he takes it as a slight.
>> NARRATOR: Rather than try to fit in,
Thomas tried to stand out.
>> He dressed in overalls and a T-shirt.
It was kind of a uniform.
But neither one of us was terribly rich,
so I, I didn't wear overalls,
but I understood what it meant for him.
>> With Clarence Thomas, what you see is somebody
who's isolating himself.
And he's kind of saying, you know,
"I don't want to try to join you,"
maybe because he's, doesn't want to be rejected again.
(bell tolling)
>> NARRATOR: After three years of Yale Law School,
graduation was nearing,
but Clarence Thomas wasn't getting the offers he expected
from prestigious law firms.
>> He was saying that he wasn't getting the kind of
offers that other students were getting.
And, and we couldn't understand it.
We thought that, well, you know, you're at Yale,
and if you're not getting offers,
something, something's wrong, you know?
Because that's the whole purpose
of going to those schools.
>> NARRATOR: Thomas would never forget
the sting of those rejections.
(shutter clicks)
>> He said he would keep stacks of rejection letters
he had gotten from law firms.
Even when he was, like, a Supreme Court justice,
he had these letters just to sort of remind him of those,
again, this feeling of rejection by kind of the elite law firms.
>> He had his Yale law degree,
and he had a ten-cent stamp stuck to it.
You know, like, a ten-cent price tag stuck to it?
'Cause he was, like, "Yeah, this is what it's worth,
right, ten cents, right, no more."
>> NARRATOR: He came to blame affirmative action
for the rejection he felt.
>> Now I knew what a law degree from Yale was worth
when it bore the taint of racial preference.
I was humiliated and desperate.
>> He thought that his degree was devalued,
that he didn't get the same
kind of cachet out of the degree once he was looking for a job
and trying to move in his career.
He assumed that others were assuming
that it's a Yale law degree, but with an asterisk next to it.
>> I disagree.
I disagree totally.
(shutter clicks)
>> NARRATOR: Orion Douglass had a strikingly similar
academic journey to Clarence Thomas's.
(shutter clicks)
Scholarship to Holy Cross, law school.
(shutter clicks)
Eventually becoming a judge.
>> How are you going to blame affirmative action
for not getting a job when you never was offered the job
for 100 years before, okay? (chuckles)
The system was still there.
The infrastructure for separation, discrimination
was still there.
It was still the segregated mindset of White America.