This is not a closed room. There was an FBI investigation. This is not an opportunity to talk about difficult matters privately or in a closed environment. This is a circus. It's a national disgrace. And from my standpoint as a black American, as far as I'm 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, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the US Senate rather than hung from a tree.
From The Reagan Diaries, Monday, June 23, 1986:
A meeting with Clarence Thomas my man on the Equal Opp. board. I've nominated him for another term. He's done a h--l of a good job. The Lynch gang on the hill is after him.
