by Benjamin Rothove

Thomas Sowell was born at the height of the Great Depression, grew up in Harlem, and dropped out of high school.  How did he become a professor at Cornell University, write more than 45 books, and become the leading intellectual of the Conservative movement?

Thomas Sowell was born in North Carolina, but his father died before he was born and his mother was unequipped to raise him.  Sowell never knew his mother and was instead raised by his great aunt.  At a young age, Sowell and his family relocated to Harlem, New York, where he would attend school.  He excelled academically and qualified to attend a prestigious high school in the city. 

Unfortunately, his family ran into monetary issues and his home life deteriorated, forcing him to leave high school at the age of 17.  Sowell worked various jobs, at one point trying out for the Brooklyn Dodgers, until he was drafted into the Marines.  He never saw Korea because he worked as a photographer, but his time in the military shaped his future. 

After he was discharged from the Marines, Sowell began attending night classes at Howard University in Washington D.C.  Due to his high grades, his professors recommended that he transfer to Harvard. Sowell graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, earned a master’s degree from Columbia, and obtained a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.

Sowell has noted that he was a Marxist for most of his 20s, and many of his early publications were sympathetic to Marxist ideas.  However, an internship at the federal government forever changed his views.  He observed an association between raising the minimum wage and a rise in unemployment but was ignored by his superiors.  This prompted him to question his former views, and he soon embraced the Chicago School of Economics.

After earning his doctorate, Sowell became an assistant professor of economics at Cornell University.  However, he left the university after the takeover of Willard Straight Hall, which he viewed as criminal activity.  Sowell went on to teach economics at Howard, Rutgers, and Amherst, before becoming a full professor at UCLA.  Finally, he moved to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he works as a Senior Fellow.  He was also offered the role of Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan but declined due to his distaste for bureaucrats.

Sowell made appearances on Milton Friedman’s Free To Choose, Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr., and testified in favor of Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court.  In addition, he has been interviewed by many notable broadcasters. Sowell has risen through prominence with bestsellers such as Basic Economics, A Conflict of Visions, Intellectuals and Society, and Discrimination and Disparities.  Also, he maintained a weekly column that was published in The Wall Street Journal and Forbes until 2016.

So the question becomes, how did Sowell become so popular in the last five years?  Sowell made an appearance on the Rubin Report in 2018, and his interviews with the Hoover Institution have been going viral as of late.  There are many YouTube channels dedicated to reading sections from Sowell’s books, and the conservative propaganda company PragerU has made Sowell a hero

So late in life, Thomas Sowell has earned the distinction that he has deserved since the 1970s.  In the past year, Sowell has had a documentary made about his life, and has become the star of a children’s book.  Sowell and his works will influence young Conservatives for the next half-century and will lead to a new generation of Conservative academics.