Untitled (Anita Hill Trial)

1992

Sue Coe moved to the United States in 1972, and became well-known for work featuring scathing caricatures of political events and critiques of racism, sexism, and capitalism. Evoking witch hunts of the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, Coe depicts Anita Hill being burned at the stake while the all-male, all-white Senate Judiciary Committee and press corps look on. During Clarence Thomas’s 1991 confirmation hearings for a judgeship on the Supreme Court, Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment. Broadcast live to the nation, the hearings became a national scandal revolving around race, gender, and sexual assault, with Thomas denying all allegations and eventually being confirmed for a position on the court, which he has held since 1991. The accusatory and disbelieving tone of both the committee and the media effectively put Hill, not Thomas, on trial.