A New Page of History Written in Caucus Room

Beneath its Corinthian columns, John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert launched their bids for the White House, the Watergate committee began unraveling the presidency of Richard M. Nixon and Lt. Col. Oliver L. North answered charges that he had trampled the Constitution.

But this day, the Senate Caucus Room was filled for an event like none it had seen before, and none it is likely to see again soon. Here at its green-draped witness table was Oklahoma law professor Anita Faye Hill, seemingly the most private of women, surrounded by her family and describing the details of an alleged sexual harassment in the flat tones of a precinct-station inquiry.

Here was Judge Clarence Thomas, so recently triumphant at his nomination for the Supreme Court, now with hurt in his eyes, taking the microphone to declare that his golden moment had been “crushed” by an ambush attack.

Here were members of the Judiciary Committee. None seemed happy they were there. “We’re back to bread and circuses,” said Sen. Alan K. Simpson, (R-Wyo.), as he strode past the jumble of electronic equipment and furniture where the “Today” show had set up its operations. For their part, the Democrats seemed almost paralyzed with concern about appearing unfair.

And outside, thronging marbled aisles and corridors, was a crowd in T-shirts, some exhorting, “Stand Up for Righteousness and Clarence Thomas,” and others urging, “No Shadow Candidate.” Chanting and cheering at the passing processions of VIPs, they quieted only to debate among themselves the gender issue that has so divided the nation.

Beyond was the television audience of millions that had tuned in to witness a woman’s tale of assault and humiliation, and a man’s story of betrayal.

In the same hearing room not long before, Clarence Thomas had inspired the nation with the story of his rise from the red clay poverty of tidewater Pin Point, Ga.

Friday, the room heard an echo of that story, as Hill recounted her childhood in the hardscrabble farmland of eastern Oklahoma. “My childhood was the childhood of work and poverty,” she said.

Hill said she had not slept for some nights in her anguish, but her manner was poised. She sat straight and motionless in a turquoise suit.

The committee, which has been accused of slighting her accusation, had left her family outside in the jammed corridor while she read her opening statement. But she made a joke that broke the tension when an embarrassed Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) offered her family seats. “It’s a very large family,” Hill warned.

The family trooped in, one after another: five sisters, one brother, patriarch Albert and mother Erma. Erma Hill, in white jacket and black leather purse, embraced her daughter.

This month, Erma Hill will be 80. She has lived long enough to hear her daughter describe pornographic films with words that have never reverberated in the Lone Tree Baptist Church, where the Hills worship. But through her thick glasses, she looked on and nodded with approving dignity, as if the Senate Judiciary Committee had convened for no reason other than to honor her daughter.

The nominee had a different attitude. Shortly after 10 a.m. and again Friday night, he strode into the room, not followed, as on his last visit, by a train of advisers, but only by his wife, Virginia, and chief Senate advocate, Sen. John C. Danforth, (R-Mo.).

Thomas spoke to the committee of a life of darkened days and long nights, and eating out his insides. He told reporters he was feeling “fine, just fine,” but the ordeal seemed to be telling on him.

His eyes, bloodshot now, darted warily around the room. He buttoned and unbuttoned his dark suit jacket, pulled on his eyebrows and bounced his left leg nervously as Biden, chairman of the committee, launched into his remarks.

But when his own turn came to speak, Thomas delivered his speech with a firmness and evenness that did justice to his eloquent words. “I am proud of what I have done--proud of my family. And this process may destroy it all,” he declared.

Nearly 12 hours later, his demeanor was much the same, as he denied “each and every allegation,” then lashed out at the committee for what he called “a circus,” a “national disgrace.”

At one point, early in the day, the hearing room was thrown into an uproar when some observers thought Hill might be backing away from her statement of the allegations to committee investigators.

Hill had refused introduction of the statement, which the committee intended to use to question Thomas. The room, until now painfully silent, was swept by whispers.

“Who’ll take my bet this is over?” asked a reporter sitting amid the tape recorders and detritus of a crowded press table.

In fact, Hill was just insisting on delivering her allegations in person.

The committee members set to squabbling. The arguing did not flatter the senators, who already have a major public relations problem. A group of female House members, including Reps. Mary Rose Oakar (D-Ohio) and Louise M. Slaughter (D-N. Y.), slipped in to stand in the rear of the room and looked on at a hearing for which some of them had argued so vehemently.

Biden, speaking of sexual harassment, acknowledged: “Perhaps the 14 men sitting here today cannot understand these things--I know there are many people watching today who suspect we will never understand.”

In the crowd outside, the senators seemed to have few fans among Thomas’ supporters or his opponents. Along one shadowy corridor, women from conservative activist Phyllis Schafly’s Eagle Forum were handing out flyers denouncing the “last-minute lynching” of Thomas as “nothing more than a desperate attempt to destroy a man with whom the mob of liberal members of Congress and radical feminists disagree.”

“The Senate is on trial here,” said Jim Pietsch, a retired missionary from Paso Robles, Calif. He already had been sitting on the floor of the rotunda for an hour and half in his eagerness to see the hearing.

But he was disturbed by the charges, and the wedge the question of sexual harassment has driven between men and women. Even the women and men standing in line were arguing about it. “If things get too tense, how are we going to propagate the species?” Pietsch wondered.