Born in 1956 on a farm in Okmulgee County, OK, to Albert and Erma Hill, Anita Hill is the youngest of 13 children. She attended Oklahoma State University, graduating in 1977, and continued to Yale Law School, where she received a J.D. degree in 1980.

Joining Washington, DC, firm of Wald, Harkrader & Ross in 1981, she met Judge Clarence Thomas and was asked to take an assistantship with him upon his appointment to Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights. She worked on projects including papers on the education of minority students and began organization of a seminar on high-risk students, which was abandoned upon Judge Thomas' transfer to the Chaimanship of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC.)

Anita Hill, by then an University of Oklahoma law professor, came forward during Judge Thomas' 1991 Senate confirmation hearings for his appointment as associate justice of the Supreme Court to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had sexually harassed her during her tenure as his assistant.

During her early employment with Judge Thomas she later reported that he asked her to go out socially with him. When she refused, he continued to press her and began taking every opportunity to have graphic sexual conversations with her. When Judge Thomas transferred to the EEOC, she agonized over whether to accompany him as his assistant, ultimately agreeing to do so because of her enjoyment of the work and lack of an alternative source of employment.

After a brief respite, the sexual comments and pressure to date Judge Thomas continued, and in January 1983, she began looking for another job. Feeling handicapped due to fear that Judge Thomas might make it difficult for her and that she might be dismissed, Hill was also trying to find other employment in the midst of a hiring freeze in the Federal government.

In the spring of 1983, Hill had an opportunity to teach at Oral Roberts University, participating in a seminar and teaching an afternoon session in a seminar. The dean of the university asked Hill if would be interested in teaching at Oral Roberts University and Hill readily agreed due to the pressure she felt at the EEOC.

Hill testified that Judge Thomas' reaction to the news of her leaving was to tell her that she now had no excuse not to go out with him, and he pressured her into a dinner date, which she reluctantly agreed to on her last day at the EEOC. She testified that during the dinner Judge Thomas told her that if she ever told anyone of his behavior that it would ruin his career. She also testified that she had had only minimal, primarily phone contact with Judge Thomas from 1983 until the date of the hearings.

Judge Thomas denied Hill's allegations during the hearings, and a media frenzy erupted. Thomas termed the hearings "a high-tech lynching for uppity Blacks." With no hard evidence either way, it became a matter of one person's word against the other's, and the Senate voted 52-48 to confirm Clarence Thomas as associate justice of the Supreme Court. Anita Hill, meanwhile, returned to lecturing, teaching and research, and currently works at Brandeis University in Massachusetts as a professor of law, social policy and women's studies.