Anita Hill will sign and personalize her book Speaking Truth to Power.
Professor Anita Hill was the 1992 recipient of the ACLU SoCal Bill of Rights Award, and we are proud to include this item in our auction.
She was honored alongside Barbra Streisand. In her remarks, Streisand encapsulated why Professor Hill was being honored: “Even if I weren’t being honored tonight, I would be here to honor Anita Hill. For three startling days last year, this woman became everywoman–every woman who has ever been called arrogant for daring to stand her ground, every woman who has been maligned for asserting her innocence, every woman who has had her sexuality used as a weapon against her. We watched her and we saw ourselves sitting in that chair. And we felt violated. Though quiet, she was strong and her performance unnerved the tribunal she faced. She was at that moment, whether she intended it or not, the finest example of women’s collective courage. We knew it and the men who went after her knew it. Heat water, and at a certain moment it becomes steam. Well, that’s what happened with the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings. The water boiled, the steam erupted, and the lid blew off the political pot. In the aftermath, 155 women ran for high office; 48 got elected to the House and six to the Senate … For that and the fact that things will never be the same, we thank Anita Hill."
About the book:
Twenty-six years before the #metoo movement, Anita Hill sparked a national conversation about sexual harassment in the workplace. After her astonishing testimony in the Clarence Thomas hearings, Anita Hill ceased to be a private citizen and became a public figure at the white-hot center of an intense national debate on how men and women relate to each other in the workplace. That debate led to ground-breaking court decisions and major shifts in corporate policies that have had a profound effect on our lives--and on Anita Hill's life.
Now, with remarkable insight and total candor, Anita Hill reflects on events before, during, and after the hearings, offering for the first time a complete account that sheds startling new light on this watershed event. Only after reading her moving recollection of her childhood on her family's Oklahoma farm can we fully appreciate the values that enabled her to withstand the harsh scrutiny she endured during the hearings and for years afterward.
Only after reading her detailed narrative of the Senate Judiciary proceedings do we reach a new understanding of how Washington--and the media--rush to judgment. And only after discovering the personal toll of this wrenching ordeal, and how Hill copes, do we gain new respect for this extraordinary woman. Here is a vitally important work that allows us to understand why Anita Hill did what she did, and thereby brings resolution to one of the most controversial episodes in our nation's history.
Please note that the ACLU of Southern California is a 501(c)4 organization and bids are not tax deductible.