Clarence Thomas
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
40 free Clarence Thomas trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Clarence Thomas has sat on the United States Supreme Court longer than almost anyone in its history, yet the man behind the opinions is far less familiar than his name. His story starts in deep poverty on the Georgia coast and runs through a strict upbringing, a change of vocation, campus activism and a rapid rise through Washington. This quiz collects the facts people are most surprised by. It covers his childhood and schooling, the mentors and books that shaped his thinking, the jobs he held before he became a judge, the confirmation hearings that gripped the country, and the cases and habits that define him on the bench. It also looks at life off the bench: his marriage, his sports loyalties, his taste in cars and the way he likes to spend a summer. The questions suit students of government and law, court watchers of every political stripe, and anyone hosting a trivia night who wants answers that come with a story attached.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Clarence Thomas went a full decade on the Supreme Court bench without doing what?
Ask a question
Ask a question is what he declined to do at oral arguments from February 2006 to February 2016; he has said he would rather listen and let the advocates make their case.
Q 02Clarence Thomas officiated at the wedding of which talk radio host, held in the justice's own home?
Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh married Marta Fitzgerald at the Thomas house in May 1994, with the justice presiding; the couple had met on the online service CompuServe.
Q 03Clarence Thomas, a summer RV traveler, has spent nights parked in which retailer's lots?
Walmart
Walmart lots were an occasional overnight stop for the 40-foot converted tour bus he and his wife have owned since 1999, when its battery had enough power.
Q 04Which career did the teenage Clarence Thomas train for before classmates' racism drove him to quit?
Priest
Priest was the goal he pursued at two seminaries; he left in 1968, convinced that his church was doing too little to fight racism.
Q 05Which senator chaired the Judiciary Committee during Clarence Thomas's 1991 confirmation hearings?
Joe Biden
Joe Biden, then a senator from Delaware, had the FBI rather than committee investigators look into the harassment claims, hoping to avoid any appearance of partisanship.
Q 06Fresh out of law school and short of cash, Clarence Thomas once tried without success to sell what?
His blood
His blood was what he offered at a blood bank, to no avail, while he was a penniless graduate studying for the bar exam.
Q 07Clarence Thomas, a NASCAR devotee, served in 1999 as grand marshal of which famous race?
Daytona 500
Daytona 500 drivers got the command to start their engines from Thomas, who became the only Supreme Court justice to have filled the ceremonial role.
Q 08Whose retirement in 1991 opened the Supreme Court seat that Clarence Thomas was nominated to fill?
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice, announced he was stepping down in June 1991, and Thomas became the second African American to sit on the Court.
Q 09Which future First Lady was a fellow student when Clarence Thomas attended law school?
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton, then Hillary Rodham, overlapped with Thomas on campus; a faculty member later said the two had the same kind of reputation as excellent students.
Q 10Which college football team does Clarence Thomas cheer for, thanks to his wife's family?
Nebraska Cornhuskers
Nebraska Cornhuskers fandom came with his marriage to Omaha native Virginia Lamp; he keeps a Husker screen saver and has said he would move to Lincoln in a heartbeat.
Q 11Which creole language was the first language of Clarence Thomas's family?
Gullah
Gullah was the everyday speech of his family, descendants of enslaved people on the Georgia coast; classmates later mocked him for the way he spoke.
Q 12In which tiny Georgia community, founded by freedmen after the Civil War, was Clarence Thomas born?
Pin Point
Pin Point sits on a tidal creek where crab and oyster canning was the main employer for decades; the old cannery is now a heritage museum.
Q 13In which Georgia city was Clarence Thomas raised by a relative who built a fuel delivery business?
Savannah
Savannah is where Myers Anderson took in Thomas and his brother in 1955, giving the boys indoor plumbing and regular meals for the first time.
Q 21Which future senator gave Clarence Thomas his first job after law school?
John Danforth
John Danforth made him the only African American on his staff of state lawyers, then brought him to Washington as a legislative aide handling energy issues.
Q 22Which agrochemical giant employed Clarence Thomas as a corporate lawyer in the late 1970s?
Monsanto
Monsanto put him in its legal department, but he found the work unsatisfying and soon left for a job on Capitol Hill.
Q 23Clarence Thomas ran the civil rights office of which Cabinet department in the early 1980s?
Education
Education was his first presidential appointment, in 1981 at the age of 32; reluctant at first, he agreed only after his former boss and others pressed him to take the post.
Q 14Clarence Thomas quit his first college over a classmate's cruel remark about whose shooting?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was shot on April 4, 1968; overhearing a fellow student hope that he would die convinced Thomas to leave the school.
Q 15Which Jesuit college did Clarence Thomas enter as a transfer student and graduate from with honors?
Holy Cross
Holy Cross, in Massachusetts, recruited him as one of its first Black students; he waited tables and washed dishes in the dining hall to cover his costs.
Q 16Which campus group did Clarence Thomas help found in college, later serving as its chairman?
Black Student Union
Black Student Union members took up his idea of a walkout after some classmates were punished more harshly than others, and about 60 students left campus with him.
Q 17Whose poster did Clarence Thomas hang in his college dorm room in his student activist days?
Malcolm X
Malcolm X fascinated the young Thomas, who read the activist's autobiography so many times that the pages of his copy wore down.
Q 18Which subject did Clarence Thomas choose as his college major because he had struggled with it?
English literature
English literature was a deliberate challenge for a student who had grown up speaking a coastal creole at home; he still finished ninth in his class.
Q 19Which law school did Clarence Thomas choose because it offered him the most financial aid?
Yale
Yale admitted him in 1971 as one of only 12 Black law students; Harvard accepted him too, but the better aid offer and an activist faculty won him over.
Q 20In which state did Clarence Thomas begin his legal career as an assistant attorney general?
Missouri
Missouri gave him his first cases, in criminal appeals and then in tax matters; years later he called the post the best job he ever had.
Q 24Which federal agency did Clarence Thomas chair for eight years in the 1980s?
The EEOC
The EEOC, which enforces the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the workplace, saw settlement awards to victims of discrimination triple while he was chairman.
Q 25Which president put Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court after passing him over a year earlier?
George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush had him on a shortlist of five in 1990 but picked David Souter instead, after advisers judged Thomas too inexperienced.
Q 26On which federal appeals court did Clarence Thomas sit for just 19 months before his promotion?
D.C. Circuit
D.C. Circuit colleagues found him talkative and gregarious; he was that bench's youngest judge at 42 and wrote 19 opinions in his 19 months there.
Q 27Which failed Supreme Court nominee's old appeals court seat did Clarence Thomas take over in 1990?
Robert Bork
Robert Bork had expounded on his judicial philosophy at his own hearings and lost; four years later Thomas remembered that and stayed guarded with senators.
Q 28Whose allegations led the Senate to reopen Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings in October 1991?
Anita Hill
Anita Hill, a law professor who had worked for Thomas at two agencies, was questioned for seven hours; it was only the third time the Senate had reopened such hearings.
Q 29With which fellow justice did Clarence Thomas vote in 92 percent of cases over his first 13 years?
Antonin Scalia
Antonin Scalia shared his originalist reading of the Constitution, though the pair later drifted apart as Thomas proved the more willing to overrule precedent.
Q 30Which memoir did Clarence Thomas publish in 2007 after receiving a $1.5 million advance?
My Grandfather's Son
My Grandfather's Son honors Myers Anderson, the stern man who raised him, and it reached number one on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list.