left when he heard a fellow student celebrate the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. ("Clarence Thomas: Supreme Court Justice" 2). From the seminary, Thomas attended a Jesuit college where he joined the Black Student Union and became involved with the Black Panthers. Even during this period, he was a skeptic and often disagreed with his more liberal associates ("Clarence Thomas: Supreme Court Justice" 3).
             In 1971, Clarence Thomas married Kathy Grace Ambush; their son Jamal was born in 1973. After Thomas's graduation in 1971, he was incapable of serving in Vietnam due to the physical exam. This left him to decide between Harvard, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania for law school; all three accepted him. He "decided on Yale because of the financial support it offered him" ("Clarence Thomas: Supreme Court Justice" 3). This financial aid was the result of an affirmative action program that Yale had recently instituted, one very similar to the ones he has adamantly opposed since his appointment ("Clarence Thomas: Supreme Court Justice" 2). Judge Thomas has argued against such racial politics because he believes they only benefit middle-class minorities and that they are harmful to the self-esteem of the beneficiaries because one never knows whether one has succeeded on one's own merit. In fact, Justice Thomas has made many contradicting statements on the subject. " !
             . . . In a 1983 speech to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission staffers, he said, as quoted in several sources, 'But for [affirmative action], God only knows where I would be today" ("Thomas, Clarence" 3). He also stated, "I don't think black people are indebted to anybody for anything. Nobody has done us any favors in the country, buddy. This thing about how they let me into Yale-that kind of stuff offends me. All they did was stop stopping us" (...