A LOOK AT POSSIBLE SUPREME COURT CANDIDATES : Clarence Thomas

Conservative

U.S. appeals court judge

Clarence Thomas, an ardent black conservative who was chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for seven years, endorses minority achievement without preferential treatment.

A Democrat-turned-Republican, Thomas was named by President Bush in 1989 to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, a seat held by retired Judge Robert H. Bork, who was rejected in his own quest for the Supreme Court.

A 43-year-old lawyer, Thomas has been mentioned frequently as a possible successor to Marshall. But his nomination to the appeals court ignited a fierce confirmation fight, with civil rights groups voicing unhappiness over his opposition to affirmative action.

During that battle, 14 members of a House subcommittee with jurisdiction over the EEOC announced their opposition to his nomination. He was confirmed by the Senate.

As EEOC chairman from 1982 until his judicial appointment, Thomas zealously pursued individual complaints of bias, but he resisted applying traditional approaches to enforcement.

Thomas grew up in the Deep South in the 1960s. He was reared by his grandparents in a Savannah, Ga., tenement with no running toilets. He once said that his grandfather, who drove an ice truck, taught him “that anything you got, you got by the sweat of your brow.” Nevertheless, he benefited from scholarships and special programs for minorities and was the only black in an all-white seminary high school.

He was graduated from Holy Cross College in 1971 and Yale University Law School in 1974. After law school, he went to work for Republican John C. Danforth, then Missouri’s attorney general. After serving for a time as an attorney for Monsanto Co., he rejoined Danforth’s staff when Danforth was elected to the Senate.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan named him an assistant secretary for civil rights in the Education Department. Thomas, who has a teen-age son from an earlier marriage, is now married to Virginia Lamp, who is white.