Anita Hill
Born: July 30, 1956
Birthplace: Lone Tree, OK
Zodiac Sign: Leo
Anita Faye Hill is an American lawyer and academic. She is a university professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at Brandeis University and a faculty member of the university's Heller School for Social Policy and Management. She became a national figure in 1991 when she accused U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, her supervisor at the United States Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, of sexual harassment.
Anita Hill was born to a family of farmers in Lone Tree, Oklahoma, the youngest of Albert and Erma Hill's 13 children. Her family came from Arkansas, where her maternal grandfather, Henry Eliot, and all of her great-grandparents had been born into slavery. Hill was raised in the Baptist faith.
After graduating from Morris High School, Oklahoma, she enrolled at Oklahoma State University and received a bachelor's degree in psychology with honors in 1977. She went on to Yale Law School, obtaining her Juris Doctor degree with honors in 1980.
She was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1980 and began her law career as an associate with the Washington, D.C. firm of Wald, Harkrader & Ross. In 1981, she became an attorney-adviser to Clarence Thomas, who was then the Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. When Thomas became chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 1982, Hill went along to serve as his assistant, leaving the job in 1983.
Hill then became an assistant professor at the Evangelical Christian O. W. Coburn School of Law at Oral Roberts University where she taught from 1983 to 1986. In 1986, she joined the faculty at the University of Oklahoma College of Law where she taught commercial law and contracts.
Hill received the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession's "Women of Achievement" award in 1992. In 2005, Hill was selected as a Fletcher Foundation Fellow. In 2008 she was awarded the Louis P. and Evelyn Smith First Amendment Award by the Ford Hall Forum. She also serves on the Board of Trustees for Southern Vermont College in Bennington, Vermont. Her opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 is listed as No. 69 in American Rhetoric's Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century (listed by rank). She was inducted into the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame in 1993. On January 7, 2017, Hill was inducted as an honorary member of Zeta Phi Beta sorority at their National Executive Board Meeting in Dallas, Texas. The following year, Hill was awarded an honorary LLM degree by Wesleyan University. The Wing's Washington, D.C. location has a phone booth dedicated to Hill. Source.