Although Sowell opposed the war and experienced racial discrimination, he was able to find fulfillment, because the Marines assigned him to work in photography, his favorite hobby and eventual lifetime passion.Īfter his discharge, in 1952, Sowell returned to his job as a civil service clerk in Washington, DC, and attended Howard University in the evenings. In 1951, Sowell was drafted into the United States Marine Corps at the height of the war in Korea. “Marx explained the world around me,” Sowell said. He contrasted the life of upper classes with his own paltry living conditions in Harlem’s tenements. He recalled that while working for Western Union he would use the little money he had to splurge on a fare for the Fifth Avenue bus and tour Manhattan’s most affluent areas. In a 2015 interview for Uncommon Knowledge, Sowell told host Peter Robinson that he became attracted in his twenties to the philosophy of Karl Marx.

To the dismay of his family, he dropped out and took various low-paying jobs, including delivering telegrams for Western Union. However, the long-distance commute from Harlem to lower Manhattan and his turbulent home life prevented young Thomas from keeping up with the demands of Stuyvesant’s rigorous curriculum. Sowell’s improved performance in middle school and his high IQ test scores paved his way for admittance to the prestigious Stuyvesant High School. “ was openly critical of the low standards of the white teachers,” Sowell writes. However, he credits a Black grade schoolteacher dedicated to helping her young Black students for pushing him to thrive academically. He made slow progress in his early education. At this point, his home life fractured as family quarrels forced him and his aunt to room in other people’s apartments. Sowell moved with his extended family to Harlem in New York City when he was nine years old. “These were some of the best years of my life.” “It never occurred to me that we were living in poverty,” Sowell writes. It was located on an unpaved street, and had no electricity or running water. In his memoir, A Personal Odyssey (2000), Sowell recalls that his first memories were living in a wooden house in Charlotte, which he says was typical of most Black neighborhoods. Willie died a few years later during complications while giving birth to another child. His father, Henry, died before he was born, and his mother, Willie, unable to care for young Thomas, gave him up for adoption to his great-aunt Molly. Thomas Sowell was born into poverty during the beginnings of the Great Depression in Gastonia, North Carolina, on June 30, 1930. In this profile for Black History Month, the Hoover Institution commemorates the life, scholarship, and incisive commentary on politics, economics, and social issues of Thomas Sowell, Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow.

Thomas sowell economy