Free Speaking Truth to Power by Anita Hill Page B

day, my hands were starting to cramp from writing and tension. It didnot help that everyone around me was as uptight as I. That only egged me on. One student walked out and turned in his exam in the middle of the afternoon, apparently giving up. Another left the auditorium-sized classroom and paced back and forth in front of the door for minutes. At the end of the second day, I knew that my endurance was spent and I could take no more. But that didn’t matter, as it was over.
    I left the room having no sense of whether I had passed or failed. No matter, I told myself, the exam is offered twice every year. I’d take it until I did pass. Each day of the months that followed I thought of it. Then, in November, only a few days before Thanksgiving holiday, the results were published. My name was on the list of those who had passed. But even in all our celebration, the most that I could feel was relief.
    I had a circle of friends in place, friends from law school who had also chosen to locate in D.C. These were individuals with whom I developed some of my closest relationships ever, a closeness that still remains. Some took government positions; others went into private practice. My classmate Susan Hoerchner, who moved to Washington in the summer of 1980 to take a job at the National Labor Relations Board, became my confidante, one of the few people I would later tell about my experiences as assistant to Clarence Thomas. Kim Taylor, another classmate, initially chose a Washington law firm but then went to the public defender’s office, eventually becoming its director. Sonia Jarvis would come to Washington in 1981 after her clerkship, and for a time we shared a two-story row house on Capitol Hill.
    By late fall, Washington was bustling with speculation about the coming change of administration. The Reagan administration would certainly bring new policies that would affect the practice of law in Washington, D.C. I had only voted for one president in my life, Jimmy Carter in 1976. That was the first election in which eighteen-year-olds were allowed to vote. I voted for Carter not so much for his political philosophy, but because he represented a kind of caring and concern about the people of the country that I found alluring. At that point, I had no developed political ideology. I had registered as a Democrat because Democratic candidates appealed to my sense of fairness. Most people inOklahoma were Democrats and in some ways mine was a default registration. It never really occurred to me to register Republican.
    By November of 1980, too concerned about work and passing the bar examination, I had failed to register to vote in Washington, D.C. By the time election day approached, all of the polls favored Ronald Reagan, whom I mistrusted. The rhetoric he spun struck me as class-divisive. Even though I was enjoying some success having graduated from law school, I could not help but think that many people, family members and friends, who had not would bear much of the economic burden if Reagan was true to his word. Nevertheless, I could not believe that he would be. The events in Iran in the winter of 1979 had taught me that no politician could be. Matters out of their control, like the kidnapping and hostage of Americans in Tehran, ruled much more than any policy they might propose. Ronald Reagan had to be just another politician promising changes that could not come to pass. I had friends who would work in the Reagan administration; I had friends who opposed Reagan. So, with a mixture of apathy and cynicism, I waited to see what would happen.

C HAPTER T HREE
    L ike most of my classmates, I welcomed the end of law school. As is often the case, however, my first work experience was not the “dream job” a Yale degree promised. Wald, Harkrader and Ross was a medium-size, relatively young Washington law firm. Gilbert Hardy, a Yale Law School graduate I’d met in New Haven, encouraged me to come to the firm as a summer associate in