Anita Hill : biography

In October 2010, Thomas’s wife Virginia, a conservative activist, left a voicemail at Hill’s office asking that Hill apologize for her 1991 testimony. Hill initially believed the call was a hoax and referred the matter to the Brandeis University campus police who alerted the FBI. After being informed that the call was indeed from Virginia Thomas, Hill told the media that she did not believe the message was meant to be conciliatory and said, "I testified truthfully about my experience and I stand by that testimony." Virginia Thomas responded that the call had been intended as an "olive branch".

Effects

Public interest in, and debate over, Hill’s testimony is said to have launched modern-day public awareness and open discussion of the issue of workplace sexual harassment in the United States with the ultimate result that the behavior is less tolerated today. Shortly after the Thomas confirmation hearings, President George H. W. Bush dropped his opposition to a bill giving harassment victims the right to seek federal damage awards, back pay and reinstatement, and the law was passed by Congress. One year later, harassment complaints filed with the EEOC were up 50 percent and public opinion had shifted in Hill’s favor. Private companies also started training programs to deter sexual harassment.

The manner in which the all-male Senate Judiciary Committee challenged and dismissed Hill’s accusations of sexual harassment angered women politicians and lawyers. According to D.C. Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, Hill’s treatment by the panel also contributed to the large number of women elected to Congress in 1992, "women clearly went to the polls with the notion in mind that you had to have more women in Congress", she said. In their anthology, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave, editors Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott and Barbara Smith described black feminists mobilizing "a remarkable national response to the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas controversy.

In 1992 a feminist group began a nationwide fundraising campaign and then obtained matching state funds to endow a professorship at the University of Oklahoma Law School in honor of Hill. Conservative Oklahoma state legislators reacted by demanding Hill’s resignation from the university, then introducing a bill to prohibit the university from accepting donations from out-of-state residents, and finally attempting to pass legislation to close down the law school. E. Z. Million, a local conservative activist and business consultant, organized protests and compared Hill to the assassin of President Kennedy. Certain officials at the university attempted to revoke Hill’s tenure. After five years of pressure, Hill resigned.