Anita Hill - Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence

Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home

Speaking Truth to Power

I finished the first chapter of Believing in 2020. But work on the book began years before.

Four months after I testified before Congress in October 1991, in what one commentator described as a wretched slanderous race and gender scandal, the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing, I was at a crossroads. I had to decide whether to respond to appeals for clarity on the issue of sexual harassment or continue trying to take back my pre-hearing life as a law professor. From the time of my upbringing on a farm, work had played a large role in who I was. Though the civil rights movement had inspired me to get a law degree, I envisioned myself as an educator, not as a crusader. Neither charismatic nor a gifted speaker, I did not fit the stereotype of a movement leader. Two conversations that I had during a trip to Atlanta helped open my eyes to a new possibility.

That day in February 1992, in the house of the president of Spelman College, I had the privilege of meeting two civil rights veterans. The first was Lillian Miles Lewis, a spirited intellectual and strategic thinker. Lewis was a university librarian whose interests were global. She was also married to Congressman John Lewis; she had helped to shape his political path and worked on civil rights issues in Atlanta. Over breakfast, Lillian convinced me of the importance of having a Black womans voice in the public conversation about gender equality. This was my first conversation with her, but it would not be my last, as our friendship and her counsel continued until Lillians death in 2012. With the mornings second visitor to President Johnnetta Betsch Coles Spelman home, the conversation took a surprising turn. Andrew Young, former Atlanta mayor and UN ambassador, reminisced about the early days of the civil rights movement. He gave an account of Dr. Kings decision to take on a leadership role which was not of his choosing but was one that was dictated by the urgency of the problems facing Blacks in the United States. Then, referring to his two daughters, Young shared his personal interest in ending harassment. His message went to the heart of my misgivings about taking an active role in the public conversation on sexual harassment. Nevertheless, Young, a minister, reminded me that the dilemma I faced was mine to pray about and resolve.

As I returned home to Oklahoma, the weight of the decision I needed to make was heavy. But the barrage of calls and letters Id received and the conversations that continued for months convinced me that, as a victim and a teacher, I had a unique perspective to speak from. I would not dwell on being the perfect leader; my biggest challenge was getting the message about the harm of the behavior right. I made what I thought would be a two-year commitment to ending sexual harassment. While I hadnt chosen the topic, I chose the path I would take to pursue a solution to it.

All the answers werent in my law books or in my job at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. As the first African American to be tenured at the states only law school, I was a symbol of progress for the schools dean, David Swank, a staunch sponsor, as well as many colleagues, students, and alums. Yet my relationship with David Boren, the university president, was fraught even before he took the job in 1994. In 1991, when Boren was an Oklahoma senator, my senator, he voted to confirm Clarence Thomas. And by 1995, Borens hesitation to meet with me about my future at the university convinced me that he would frown upon my taking a public stand against ending sexual harassment.

If leaving a tenured position felt like an enormous career risk, leaving Oklahoma and my family felt foolhardy. My parents and twelve siblings were the source of love and care that I could depend on in every aspect of my life, before, during, and after 1991. For ten years, Id lived within a two-hour drive from my parents home. Would the answers that I was looking for in my work be worth uprooting my entire life and risking the ties I had to the people I loved the most? Even asking the questions made me wonder if I was cut out to devote my life to such an immense calling.

However, I held on to the belief that change, monumental change, was called for and that I had a role to play in it. So despite my trepidation, I accepted an offer for a full-time position at Brandeis University and moved to Massachusetts in 1999. But I craved the familiar. Once I nested in my circa 1887 house with its creaky floors and horsehair plaster walls, I realized, without a doubt, that I wasnt in Oklahoma anymore. Nothing in New England says prairie, not the houses, the trees, the weather, or even the sky. I missed my family terriblymy parents were in their eighties by then. But I found a community that would help me grow my work. And best of all, I fell in love with a man who would come to support and share my passion for it. Though Chucks pronounced Boston accent was not the familiar sound I longed for, the effort he made to connect with my family sealed our relationship.

By 2010, I had settled into my life in the Boston area. The Thomas hearing hadnt faded from my memoryit never willbut it had receded. Yet in the months leading up to the twentieth anniversary of my testimony, I found myself wondering whether it still mattered. Filmmaker Freida Mock convinced me that it did and that she was the person who could make a film that would show how it mattered. Mock began the production of