(ThyBlackMan.com) It has come to my attention that Justice Clarence Thomas, the lone African American on the US Supreme Court, has not asked a question or spoken in open court in many sessions (since February 2006). While some have questioned the intellectual fire power of the Justice, I wondered if his lack of articulation might be attributable to self-consciousness over a residual “Deep South” black dialect.
Upon reflection, I believe both suppositions are weaker than a third. The prowess of Justice Thomas’ written opinions displaying fierce logical 
consistency and commitment to his “originalist” philosophical conviction for constitutional interpretation weakens or refutes the former hypothesis for his silence, and his prolific schedule of speaking engagements around the country counter my suspicion.
So what better explains why Justice Thomas, whom I misguidedly supported during his confirmation hearing to become a justice of the Supreme Court, does not talk out in Court anymore? On, arguably, one of the most important issues to come before the Court for a southern born black man of Justice Clarence Thomas age, he spoke out for himself and black people, against cross burning being free speech or “protected speech” under the US Constitution and no one listened
The case involved a 1952 Virginia statute that did not require the proof of “intent” to criminally convict a person of intimidation that person was found to have burned a cross in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The law banned cross burning in the commonwealth based on its history. In 1998 Black led a group of Klansmen in a cross burning and was convicted under the statute. He had argued successfully to the Virginia Supreme Court that his cross burning was protected “free speech”. That ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court.
In Thomas’ questioning in the case, he reminded the other Justices of the repugnant signal of violence that cross burning sent during the Ku Klux Klan’s 100-year history of real “lynching” (not just the “hi-tech” variety to which he referred during his confirmation hearing). In the final vote, no one agreed with Thomas. Not one of his conservative allies. Not a moderate. Not a single liberal Justice voted with Thomas on this one.
Mike Sacks at the Huffington Post whose article I read this morning that brought this case to my attention pointed out that a Supreme Court justices often use their questions as a means to get the rest of the Court to learn what the questioning justices already know. In this case, Justice Thomas asked the Solicitor General for his understanding of the effects of cross burning to amplify the argument that cross burning rather than being “protected speech” under the First Amendment might not be more appropriated considered “like a sword of Damocles hanging over the person whose head” is being threatened.
Justice Thomas intoned that even “threatened” was too mild a term. He preferred the term “a reign of terror.”
Justice Thomas’ eloquence in this case was what I, as a rural born black Virginian, expected in my initial but misguided support of Justice Thomas’ ascension to the highest court. I expected that Thomas would educate the others in his delivery when such cases came before the court. Yet, with all the moral authority he could muster as a southern born black man, he spoke in this case as one who lived under that sword himself, but no one listened.
If on an issue of such importance, no one listened, why talk anymore he must have decided?
Staff Writer; Victor Langhorne
