Anita Hill

Anita Faye Hill (born July 30, 1956) is an American lawyer, educator and author. She is a professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at Brandeis University and a faculty member of the university's Heller School for Social Policy and Management. She became a national figure in 1991 when she accused U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, her supervisor at the United States Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, of sexual harassment.

Early life and education

Anita Hill was born to a family of farmers in Lone Tree, Oklahoma, the youngest of Albert and Erma Hill's 13 children. Her family came from Arkansas, where her maternal grandfather Henry Eliot and all of her great-grandparents had been born into slavery. Hill was raised in the Baptist faith.

Hill graduated from Morris High School, Oklahoma, in 1973, where she was class valedictorian. Hill received her bachelor's degree in psychology in 1977 from Oklahoma State University. In 1980, she earned her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut.

Early career

Hill was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1980 and began her law career as an associate with the Washington, D.C. firm of Wald, Harkrader & Ross. In 1981, she became an attorney-adviser to Clarence Thomas, who was then the Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. When Thomas became chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 1982, Hill served as his assistant, leaving the job in 1983.