Diane Brady on 'Fraternity'

After the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968, a Catholic priest and theology professor at the College of the Holy Cross sought out young black men to integrate into the all-while school. Among the 20 young men he found were a future Supreme Court justice, a Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the most successful defense attorneys in the country.

Author Diane Brady chronicles the stories of five of those young men in her book "Fraternity." She'll join The Daily Circuit Monday to talk about her book.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was one of those men.

"I think that when you contrast how he feels about Holy Cross versus what he has said about his experiences at Yale, there's a profound difference," Brady said. "I think one of the big differences was his classmates, and it was the way he felt treated at the college and certainly the way he felt treated by Fr. Brooks."

From the Boston Globe review:

"Yet Thomas was clearly a leader, as were several of his peers in the Class of 1972. The opportunities being afforded a new generation of black Americans were far greater than those of their fathers and grandfathers, but they would also be tested in new ways. 'They were being handed a chance to fail without necessarily being given all the support they needed to succeed,' Brady writes."

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