Clarence Thomas hadn't asked a question from the bench of the U.S. Supreme Court in 10 years , not until late February after the death of his colleague Antonin Scalia. He'd been questioned often about this. Journalists from nearly every major news organization on the planet repeatedly raised the topic in their stories about major cases before the high court (like Citizens United, which Thomas is somewhat responsible for). Once he did speak, it became major headlines for days.

But why does Thomas usually remain silent?

The high court's most controversial justice has offered an explanation just once – but it is a fairly extraordinary one. Progressives routinely dismiss it – or any sort of interpretation of what it means – but it's an interesting answer and shouldn't be dismissed so quickly or easily.

The reason he's silent from the bench – a practice that first began during law school – has to do with his formative years, he told The New York Times 15 years ago.

Until he was 6, Thomas lived in deep poverty in the lowcountry in Pin Point, Georgia. Like nearly every black child who grows up in Gullah-Geechee homes in the lowcountry – which includes communities descended from plantation slaves primarily in Georgia and South Carolina, but with roots in northern Florida and southern North Carolina – he spoke Gullah at home.

For years, Gullah was considered to be "pidgin English" – corrupted or badly spoken English that whites generally dismissed as the language of the uneducated. But Gullah isn't that, scholars have proven.

Gullah is a beautiful language, with a rich heritage. Some of the stories from the Gullah tradition have made their way into popular culture in America, though most people don't realize the origin. Br'er Rabbit and his briar patch is a Gullah story. The next time you sing "Kumbayah" proudly, with emotion and feeling, you can thank Gullah at the end of the song.

"In the 1700s, rice plantations flourished along the coastal areas and barrier islands stretching from North Carolina to Florida. Because they required specific skills, slaves were brought here from similar environments in Africa, where rice had been grown successfully for centuries," syndicated columnist Fyllis Hockman wrote in 2013. "In many cases the Africans' knowledge of rice cultivation far exceeded that of their masters. Because the work required a wide variety of skills that only the Africans possessed, they were often accorded more responsibility and autonomy than their cotton-picking counterparts."

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"They came with their own language, beliefs and customs — and because they were so isolated in coastal regions that were not connected to the mainland until the 1950s, their Gullah culture flourished and proliferated among the many Africans who came to settle there, and it still endures today," she wrote.

These slaves also had to learn how to communicate with slaves from other parts of the world who didn't necessarily know their West African dialect. They needed to learn enough English to satisfy the demands of their white masters, while simultaneously communicating with one another in ways those same white masters might not recognize.

Gullah emerged from those twin demands. It is a pure example of prevailing in the face of nearly impossible odds and, when descendants of slaves in the lowcountry speak Gullah in their homes today, it is a reflection of their heritage and ability to overcome adversity.

But Thomas doesn't see it that way. All he remembers is what many children from Gullah-Geechee homes learn quickly when they go to public school: You can speak Gullah, the language of your ancestors, in your home. But don't speak Gullah in public schools, especially around white people. If you do, you'll be branded as poor, uneducated and disadvantaged.

So Thomas stopped speaking Gullah in public. And he largely stopped speaking publicly at all, he told the New York Times, for fear that any trace of that former life in Pin Point would somehow work its way into his speech.

"When I was 16, I was sitting as the only black kid in my class, and I had grown up speaking a kind of a dialect ... called Geechee. Some people call it Gullah, and people praise it now. But they used to make fun of us back then. It's not standard English," the Supreme Court justice told the Times.

"So I learned that, and I just started developing the habit of listening. And it just got to be, I didn't ask questions in college or law school," he said. "For all those reasons and a few others, I just think that it's more in my nature to listen rather than to ask a bunch of questions. The only reason I could see for asking the questions is to let people know I've got something to ask. That's not a legitimate reason in the Supreme Court of the United States."

Most progressives and observers of Thomas' actions on the high court, however, dismiss this explanation.

"Thomas bears the scars of yet another black prejudice: not only was he too black, he was also culturally too backcountry," Howard University sociology professor Orlando Patterson wrote in his 2007 review of Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher's exhaustive biography, "Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas."

"Coastal Georgia is one of the few areas in America where a genuinely Afro-English creole — Gullah — is used, and Thomas grew up speaking it. In Savannah he was repeatedly mocked for his 'Geechee' accent and was so traumatized by this that he developed the habit of simply listening when in public," he wrote. "That experience, Thomas claims, helps explain his mysterious silence on the Supreme Court during oral arguments. This seems a stretch, since Thomas is now an eloquent public speaker and an engaging conversationalist who, like most educated Southerners north of home, erased his accent long ago."

Patterson doesn't offer another explanation for Thomas' silence on the bench of the high court; neither do other journalists, analysts, or observers. But what if Thomas' simple explanation – that he's ashamed of his roots in poverty, expressed through the language of his ancestors – actually makes the most sense?

Ophelia Grant of Georgia Gullah/Geechee Shouters of McIntosh County, Ga., performs in Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2011.

Andre Chung/MCT via Getty Images

Interestingly, Thomas shares his Gullah heritage with first lady Michelle Obama. Like Thomas, Mrs. Obama has deep Gullah connections. She may not have grown up in the lowcountry but, unlike Thomas, Mrs. Obama doesn't distance herself from her Gullah roots. She displays them proudly. In fact, she went out of her way to incorporate Gullah into her husband's 2013 inauguration celebration.

A float in the inauguration parade included a quilt that told the story of her ties to the Gullah culture. Mrs. Obama's ancestors were slaves at the Friendfield Plantation in Georgetown, South Carolina. One of the dignitaries who rode on that 2013 float in the Obama inauguration – Robert Macdonald, the director emeritus of the Museum of the City of New York – was astounded the then-new Gullah-Geechee Heritage Commission was given such a place in the spotlight.

"For such a young organization, it's rather startling in a way," Macdonald told the Charleston Post and Courier. "I think it reflects the interest in preserving the diversity of American culture and history, which has made this country unique."

One reason the float made its appearance is almost certainly due to the insistence of U.S. Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who has fought for greater national recognition of the Gullah heritage. Clyburn, who was instrumental in the creation of the Gullah national commission in the first place, wrote the commission to see if it was interested in taking part, and then to the inauguration committee itself to see that it was included, pointing out Mrs. Obama's connection to the Gullah-Geechee culture.

The celebration of Gullah heritage is, finally, starting to take hold in America. Journalists have started to dig into the history, culture, roots and absorbing history behind Gullah along the coastline of the United States. Scholars like J. Herman Blake, a sociologist from the University of South Carolina,—Beaufort, are working to preserve decades of the Gullah heritage before it's forgotten.



Blake said it's important to capture what Gullah was like a century ago since, as in all things, the language has changed in the decades since it was born. People tend to speak Gullah privately in their homes, and English in public. But it's starting to be forgotten, even in Gullah homes. And because some, like Clarence Thomas, dismiss it as a relic of poverty that must be abandoned in public, it causes communities to distance themselves from it further.