PARKER: Clarence Thomas’ great speech on the Declaration 

Thomas's life, career and education were trial by fire

Published Apr 25, 2026  •  Last updated 22 minutes ago  •  3 minute read

In this file photo taken on October 7, 2022 associate US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas poses for the official photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC. Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY /AFP via Getty Images

Many speeches will be delivered this year about the Declaration of Independence as America celebrates its 250th birthday.

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However, I think Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas just delivered the greatest speech on April 15 at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas, Austin.

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The force of Thomas’ words does not just result from his deep understanding of what the United States is about and how the Declaration of Independence defines it.

The force flows from Thomas’ personal reality. He has lived what the Declaration is about. His words are not just the product of thought and study, but of Thomas’s entire life experience.

Thomas grew up poor in America’s Jim Crow South.

But he says, “Despite the multiplicity of laws and customs that wreaked a bigotry, it was universally believed among those blacks with whom I lived and who had very little or no formal education, that in God’s eyes and under our Constitution, we were equal.

“When you lived in a segregated world with palpable discrimination and the governments nearest to you enforced laws and customs that promoted unequal treatment, it was obvious that your rights or your dignity did not come from those governments, but rather from God,” he continued.

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An ominous beginning for a future Supreme Court justice.

God-given truths of Declaration

Thomas’s life, career and education were trial by fire.

By the time he became chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the country had already been captured by progressivism, particularly on matters of race.

His principled adherence to the eternal God-given truths of the Declaration, and refusal to fold to the progressive agenda, which he calls the “then-prevailing orthodoxy on race,” was a lonely battle which left him under constant attack.

It was then that he realized that carrying out the agenda was more than knowing the principles. It was about having the courage to fight, and even, if necessary, die for them.

Thomas notes that the principles stated in the opening of the Declaration — “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights” — could have gotten nowhere without the last paragraph of the Declaration.

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There, the signers conclude, “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honour.”

“What changed the world,” per Thomas, “was not the words, but the commitment and spirit of the people willing to labour, sacrifice and even give their lives” for what (Abraham) Lincoln called at Gettysburg “the last full measure of devotion.”

Thomas asks, “Do any of us have what it took for our young soldiers to storm Normandy Beach, to fight at Guadalcanal, to later fight at Chosin Reservoir?”

He discusses the emergence of progressivism, which challenged the core principles of the Declaration. As Thomas notes, its pedigree is not American but was born in 19th-century Germany of Otto von Bismarck.”

Great struggle for country’s future

It’s a worldview that rejects the notion that God-given truths govern our lives, but rather politics and government so-called experts.

It’s deeply ironic and unfortunate that the Civil Rights Movement, a movement about human freedom, a movement about moving Black people out from the distortions of political control, and to our regime of freedom defined by our Declaration’s principles, itself saw progressivism as the answer to problems of race.

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We are in a great struggle today for the future of our country.

The movement toward progressivism has delivered to us a new time with massive government, deficits, debts and bankrupt entitlement programs. The assault of progressivism on the God-given principles of the Declaration of Independence has also taken a great toll on our culture, with the traditional family and our birth of children in dangerous decline.

To restore the vitality of our nation, we surely need a “new birth of freedom.”

A good start for all is to listen to Thomas’ message.

Star Parker is founder of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education

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