Justice Clarence Thomas became the six longest serving Supreme Court Justice this week after taking the bench in 1991. 

Mark Paoletta, a longtime friend, supporter of Thomas and co-editor of Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, marked the occasion on X with historical context and praise. 

Today, Justice Clarence Thomas became the 6th longest serving Justice in our nation’s history, sharing this distinction today with one of our greatest Justices who is also a guiding light for Justice Thomas, Justice John Marshall Harlan.

Justice Harlan’s solo dissent from a shameful majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 establishing the racist “separate but equal” rule set him apart as a man of courage and first principles.

As Justice Thomas wrote in his magisterial concurrence in the 2023 Harvard case:

“Only one Member of the Court adhered to the equality principle; Justice Harlan, standing alone in dissent, wrote: ‘Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.’ Id., at 559. Though Justice Harlan rightly predicted that Plessy would, ‘in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made . . . in the Dred Scott case,’ the Plessy rule persisted for over a half century. Ibid. While it remained in force, Jim Crow laws prohibiting blacks from entering or utilizing public facilities such as schools, libraries, restaurants, and theaters sprang up across the South.

This Court rightly reversed course in Brown v. Board of Education. The Brown appellants—those challenging segregated schools—embraced the equality principle, arguing that ‘[a] racial criterion is a constitutional irrelevance, and is not saved from condemnation even though dictated by a sincere desire to avoid the possibility of violence or race friction.’”

Following the courageous example of Justice Harlan, Justice Thomas has been the most forceful advocate for the Court to follow the Constitution’s command that the use of race is never permissible - that the Constitution, in Justice Harlan’s words, is “color blind.”

It has been a long road on this issue since Justice Thomas first arrived on the Court on October 23, 1991, and he has written many compelling dissents and concurrences, including his powerful Grutter dissent in 2003, all of which laid the groundwork for the Supreme Court to arrive at its superb holding in the 2023 Harvard case striking down the use of race in college admissions.

Justice Thomas’ 60 page concurrence in the Harvard case is a tour de force for the ages. 

It’s worth celebrating when Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice John Marshall Harlan share the exact number of days of years of service on the Supreme Court (12, 360 days).  Learn more about Justice Thomas’s inspiring life from being born into abject poverty in the segregated south to becoming our greatest Justice by watching the documentary, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words or reading his memoirs, My Grandfather’s Son.

Cheers to many more years of Thomas' wisdom and brilliance on the Supreme Court.