Thomas Sowell

• Born: June 30, 1930
• Birthplace: Gastonia, North Carolina

Economist, scholar, and journalist

After spending his youth in poverty, Thomas Sowell rose through hard work and intelligence, not political pressure, to write on economics, race, education, and other subjects and, in doing so, to risk unpopularity by studying the results of public policies rather than merely the policy makers’ stated purposes.

Early Life

Thomas Sowell was born on June 30, 1930, to an impoverished widow in Gastonia, North Carolina. He was raised by the aunt of his deceased father, because his mother could not afford to raise the four children she already had. Sowell was a teenager when he learned that the woman he called “Mama” was not his biological mother. Nevertheless, he had a good childhood in some respects in Charlotte, North Carolina. Although his home was poor and his great-aunt was moody, the adoption brought Sowell material advantages. He developed close relationships with his adoptive father and sister, Birdie, who taught him how to read before his fourth birthday.

The situation changed when his adoptive mother and her husband separated. In 1939, Sowell moved with her to New York City. Living in Harlem, Sowell overcame deficiencies in his schooling and, despite his combativeness, excelled academically in integrated public schools. He won admission to Stuyvesant, a prestigious high school, but his adoptive mother could not understand the commitment that his course work required. Their relationship intolerably strained, Sowell dropped out of Stuyvesant in 1946. Early in 1948, he left home.

In 1951, during the Korean War, Sowell was drafted into the US Marine Corps. After basic training in South Carolina, he studied photography in Florida and served the rest of his commitment in North Carolina, where he occasionally defied the military system.

Life’s Work

After completing his military service in 1953, Sowell used the provisions of the postwar G.I. Bill to help pay his expenses at Howard University, a historically Black institution. He also worked as a civil servant in Washington, DC. Dissatisfied with the academics at Howard, Sowell transferred to Harvard University, from which he graduated magna cum laude in 1958 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. The next year, he earned his master’s degree in the same field at Columbia University. He then enrolled in the doctoral program in economics at the University of Chicago, where his teachers included future Nobel laureates Milton Friedman and George Stigler.

Sowell left Chicago before receiving his doctorate to work full time. After a stint at the US Department of Labor from 1961 to 1962, he taught at Douglass College of Rutgers University. However, he left after one school year because he believed that his department head wanted him to lower his standards as a teacher. In 1963–64, Sowell taught at Howard before leaving under similar circumstances.

Sowell married and took a job as an economic analyst for American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) before returning to academia in September 1965. He became an assistant professor of economics at Cornell University and published significantly over the next few years. In 1968, he earned his doctorate from Chicago. As at Douglass and Howard, Sowell became unhappy at Cornell, not only because he felt pressure to treat students more leniently but also because he felt that the university lowered admission standards for African Americans. After his resignation from Cornell, he had a happier experience at Brandeis University in 1969–70 but left for a more lucrative position at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

Sowell’s first marriage ended in divorce in 1975, with his wife of about eleven years gaining custody of their son and daughter. He later remarried. At UCLA, Sowell’s high standards were supported by the head of the economics department but clashes with students led him to leave in 1980 for a nonteaching position as a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, with which he remained affiliated into the 2020s. Sowell wrote a widely read newspaper column and, on average, more than one book a year. Although he once was offered an opportunity to run for the US Senate as a Republican and was acquainted with President Ronald Reagan, Sowell resisted involvement in politics.

Sowell continued to write new books in addition to publishing subsequent editions of previous works, particularly one of his landmark works, Basic Economics, which was originally published in 2000. In 2016, as he was advancing in age and still working as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, he had announced that the was ending his nationally syndicated column. By 2021 Sowell had published four dozen books, several monographs, and numerous essays and journal articles.

Significance

Sowell is known for being willing to risk unpopularity by speaking his mind about economics, education, and politics. As someone who, even as an adult, underwent indignities because of his race, he was happy when segregation in public schools and public accommodations became illegal, but he believed that the advancement of African Americans was a matter not merely of legislation and judicial decisions but of socioeconomic improvement originating among African Americans themselves—improvement that unproven ideas from bureaucrats and self-admiring intellectuals would likely hamper. To his detractors, he has seemed inflexible, harsh, and wrongheaded. To his admirers, he has seemed unwavering and courageous in his support of truth. In 2002, the National Endowment for the Humanities honored him with the National Humanities Medal, and he was featured in the documentary Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World (2020) and the biography Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell (2021).

Bibliography

“Black History Month Profile: Thomas Sowell.” Hoover Institution, 19 Feb. 2021, www.hoover.org/news/black-history-month-profile-thomas-sowell. Accessed 20 July 2021.‌

Sowell, Thomas. Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy. 5th ed., Basic Books, 2015.

Sowell, Thomas. Black Rednecks and White Liberals. Encounter Books, 2005.

Sowell, Thomas. "Do No Harm: An Interview with Thomas Sowell." Interview by David Harsanyi. The Federalist, 13 Jan. 2015, thefederalist.com/2015/01/13/do-no-harm-an-interview-with-thomas-sowell/. Accessed 15 Nov. 2017.

Sowell, Thomas. A Personal Odyssey. Free Press, 2000.

Sowell, Thomas. The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. Basic Books, 1995.

Thomas Sowell, www.tsowell.com. Accessed 20 July 2021.

"Thomas Sowell." Hoover Institution, www.hoover.org/profiles/thomas-sowell. Accessed 20 July 2021.