Conservative columnists joined the fray. They accused liberal Thomas-bashers of hypocrisy by challenging his belief in “natural law” as a basis for legal rulings even though the Warren court did just that. (Natural law holds that human freedoms derive from God and nature, not laws made by people.) More pieces of Thomas’s past surfaced, including a 1985 college commencement speech revealing his passionate belief in black self-reliance. Excerpts:

Over the past 15 years, I have watched as others have jumped quickly at the opportunity to make excuses for black Americans. It is said that blacks cannot start businesses because of discrimination. But I remember businesses that were run in spite of bigotry. It is said that we can’t learn because of bigotry. But I know that tens of thousands of blacks were educated at historically black colleges, in spite of discrimination. We learned to read in spite of segregated libraries. We built homes in spite of segregated neighborhoods.

I have no delusions about discrimination, racism or bigotry. I am not among those who believed that this unholy triumvirate went some place. Does it mean that you roll over and give up?

In 1964, when I entered the seminary, I was the only black in my class and one of two in the school. A year later, I was the only one in the school. Not a day passed that I was not pricked by prejudice.

But I had an advantage over black students and kids today. I had never heard any excuses made. The women who worked in those kitchens and waited on the bus knew it was prejudice which caused their plight, but that didn’t stop them from working. My grandfather knew why his business wasn’t more successful, but that didn’t stop him from getting up at two in the morning to carry ice, wood and fuel oil. They weren’t pinned down by it. They fought discrimination under W. W. Law [a Georgia civilrights leader] and the NAACP.

You all have a much tougher road. You now have a popular national rhetoric which says that you can’t learn because of racism, you can’t get up in the mornings because of racism. Unlike me, you must not only overcome the repressiveness of racism, you must also overcome the lure of excuses. You have twice the job I had.