Anita Hill's testimony and other key moments from the Clarence Thomas hearings

During the televised hearings, which lasted three days, Anita Hill, who then taught at the University of Oklahoma’s law school, detailed allegations of workplace sexual harassment by Thomas, who was her supervisor at two government agencies. And Thomas forcefully denied the accusations, claiming they played into stereotypes of black men.

The astonishing testimony aired Hill’s accounts of crude behavior and vulgar language, the likes of which had never before been discussed in the buttoned-up hearing rooms of the U.S. Senate. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s dismissive treatment of Hill by the all-male, all-white committee empowered a wave of women to run for state and national office.

On Thursday, Christine Blasey Ford, 51, a California-based psychologist who has accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a booze-filled high school party, said she would testify before the committee so long as senators offer “terms that are fair and which ensure her safety.” As Thomas did in the ‘90s, Kavanaugh, 53, has categorically denied the accusations and said he will testify before the committee.

Democratic lawmakers have already warned the committee not to repeat the mistakes it made in 1991 — when their party held a majority in the Senate — calling the process rushed and the treatment of Hill “abhorrent.”

Here are five moments that stand out from the hearings.

— Hill details accusations, then must repeat them

Hill, who was then 35, first testified before the committee on Oct. 11, 1991. Speaking in a calm, even tone, she detailed her accusations of sexual harassment by Thomas, who oversaw her work at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Hill said Thomas had repeatedly asked her to go out with him in a social capacity and would not take no for an answer. She said he would talk about sex in vivid detail, describing pornography he had seen involving women with large breasts, women having sex with animals, group sex and rape scenes.

Thomas would also talk about his own “sexual prowess” in workplace conversations, Hill said. And he once mentioned a pornographic film whose star was called “Long Dong Silver,” which turned into an infamous name in American political lore.

“It would have been more comfortable to remain silent,” she said. “But when I was asked by a representative of this committee to report my experience, I felt that I had to tell the truth. I could not keep silent.”

After Hill’s opening statement, Sen. Joe Biden, the Delaware Democrat who was then chairman of the committee, began questioning her on the specific locations of her harassment allegations. She mentioned the “incident of the Coke can,” which — as she had described a half-hour earlier — involved Thomas asking her who had put pubic hair on his can of cola.

Biden asked, “Can you describe it, once again, for me please?”

After a sigh, Hill did.

— Thomas calls hearings a ‘high-tech lynching’

On the first day of the hearings, which stretched late into the night, Thomas, who was then 43, excoriated the committee for facilitating what he viewed as a racist smear campaign.

“This is a circus. It is a national disgrace,” Thomas said. “As a black American, as far as I am concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas.”

“It is a message that, unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you,” he said. “You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.”

When questioning Thomas the next day, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, set him up to elaborate on his position that the hearings were fueled by racism. Thomas charged that Hill’s allegations about him boasting about his anatomy and his “sexual prowess” played into racist stereotypes about black men.

— Senator suggests Hill cribbed from ‘The Exorcist’

During the same part of Saturday’s hearing, Hatch, who is still on the Judiciary Committee, brandished a copy of the horror novel “The Exorcist.” Reading from the book itself, Hatch quoted the phrase, “There appeared to be an ‘alien pubic hair floating around in my gin.'”

He appeared to draw a direct connection to Hill’s testimony about the Coke can. She was never given a chance to rebut his claim.

“Do you think that was spoken by happenstance?” Hatch said to Thomas. “And she would have us believe that you were saying these things because you wanted to date her?”

He also suggested Hill had copied the verbiage of “Long Dong Silver” from the details of a federal-court case in Kansas, which also involved a woman alleging sexual harassment.

“This is a public opinion that’s available in any law library,” Hatch said. “I’m sure it’s available there in the law school at Oklahoma.”

— Lawmakers suggest Hill is mentally unstable

On Sunday, the third day of hearings, Hill’s representatives announced she had passed a lie-detector test intended to strengthen the credibility of her accusations.

Later that day, Sen. Alan K. Simpson, R-Wyo., read aloud a statement from an unidentified federal prosecutor, suggesting Hill could be delusional.

“I understand, based on information from reliable scientific sources,” Simpson said, “that if a person suffers from a delusional disorder he or she may pass a polygraph test. Therefore, a polygraph examination in this context has absolutely no bearing on whether the events at issue are true or untrue.”

He failed to mention that the federal prosecutor, a U.S. attorney, was a member of Thomas’ defense team, according to “Strange Justice,” a 1994 book on the hearings written by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson.

Earlier in the hearings, senators had cited an affidavit from John N. Doggett III, an acquaintance of Hill and law school friend of Thomas, that also charged Hill was “somewhat unstable.” Doggett said he believed she had romantic fantasies about him, a claim Hill denied. Doggett’s testimony on Sunday was bizarre and, at times, irrelevant. At one point he talked about a random woman he met at a restaurant the previous night who told him to “put your penis back in your pants.”

— The women who were never called to testify

Angela Wright, a former public affairs officer who worked with Thomas at the EEOC, was prepared to speak before the committee about her own accusations against him of sexual improprieties. Wright, who was then 37, told Senate aides that Thomas had continually pressured her to date him and made sexual comments about women’s bodies.

Wright, then an assistant editor at a North Carolina newspaper, traveled to Washington for the hearings. Her legal team had secured a corroborating witness who was also prepared to speak.

But in Saturday’s televised session, Simpson told viewers that Wright seemed to have “cold feet” about testifying. Thomas also told the committee he had dismissed her from the EEOC for calling a staff member a homophobic slur. According to the book “Strange Justice,” Wright denied saying either, and the staff member does not recall Wright using the slur.

Wright was never called to testify. Biden, the committee chairman, attributed it to time constraints. But The Times reported that some Democrats had opposed Wright’s appearance because they doubted her credibility.

Two days later, the full Senate voted 52-48 to confirm Thomas.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Anita Hill's testimony and other key moments from the Clarence Thomas hearings

The sexual assault accusation against Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, has prompted unavoidable flashbacks to the confirmation process of Judge Clarence Thomas in 1991.

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