Sen. Ted Cruz's forthcoming biography of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas includes an account of Thomas's time as a seminary student, according to an interview published by SCOTUSblog. Thomas reportedly devoted himself to studying Latin, a subject he found notoriously difficult, as a way to demonstrate his merit to those who believed that, because he was Black, he was intellectually inferior.
The interview presents Thomas's explanation as framing his academic effort as a direct response to racial prejudice rather than a purely scholarly interest. The anecdote offers a personal perspective on the formative experiences that shaped one of the court's most consequential justices. Since only this single source was provided, there are no differing accounts to compare.