Republicans and Democrats Dismissed Anita Hill. Christine Blasey Ford Won’t Be So Easy to Ignore.

When Anita Hill testified before an all-male and all-white Senate Judiciary committee in 1991, no one was in her corner—not the country, not the lawmakers grilling her, and certainly not history. Sexual harassment was a new term, and the senators, Republicans and Democrats alike, would have preferred to silence her and go ahead with their important work confirming a Supreme Court justice without hearing her unsavory and unproven allegations against Clarence Thomas, an African-American nominee and the protege of then Republican Senator John Danforth, an ordained Episcopal priest.