Clarence Thomas cleared the path for Obama

As Obama's campaign picked up speed, the typical comment was how he was overcoming the race issue. To such an extent that the rhetoric was almost beginning to ignore decades of efforts to treat blacks as equals with the whites, and the lives lost in the process. Within my own mind, and with a few, I had always argued that Obama's candidacy would never have been possible without Colin Powell. Powell's fame during Bush I's Iraq war, and then his public role in Bush II's government made it possible for Americans (and the rest of the world) to view him, or any other black, as a possible president.

This essay in The Root, argues that it was Clarence Thomas who cleared the path for Obama, in the post-Civil Rights era. The author then goes on to quote David Nasaw, a City University of New York historian:
'When Strom Thurmond ushered Clarence Thomas [then a nominee to become the second black person on the Supreme Court] and his white wife into the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room…that signaled that something was happening in American culture.'"