Thomas Sowell ( SOHL; born June 30, 1930) is an American economist, economic historian, and social theorist. With widely published commentary and books—and as a guest on TV and radio—he is a well-known voice in the American conservative movement as a prominent black conservative. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and was a recipient of the National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush in 2002. Sowell was born in Gastonia, North Carolina, and grew up in Harlem, New York City. Due to poverty and difficulties at home, he dropped out of Stuyvesant High School and worked various odd jobs, eventually serving in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. Afterward, he graduated with honors from Harvard University in 1958. He earned a master's degree in economics from Columbia University the next year, and a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968. In his academic career, he held professorships at Cornell University, Brandeis University, and the University of California, Los Angeles. He has also worked at think tanks, including the Urban Institute. Since 1977, he has worked at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy. Sowell has influenced a wide range of economists, intellectuals, and public figures, including fellow economist Walter E. Williams and U.S. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. He was offered a position as Federal Trade Commissioner in the Ford administration and was considered for posts including U.S. Secretary of Education in the Reagan administration, but declined both. Sowell is the author of more than 45 books (including revised and new editions) on a variety of subjects, including politics, economics, education, and race, and he has been a syndicated columnist in more than 150 newspapers. His views are described as conservative on social issues, libertarian on economics, or libertarian-conservative. He has said he may be best labeled as a libertarian, though he disagrees with the "libertarian movement" on some issues, such as national defense.
Early life Sowell was born in 1930 into a poor family in Gastonia, North Carolina. His father died shortly before his birth. His mother, a house maid who already had four children, died a few years later from complications during childbirth. He was adopted and raised by his great-aunt Molly and her two adult daughters. In his autobiography A Personal Odyssey, Sowell wrote that his childhood encounters with white people were so limited that he did not know blond was a hair color. He recalls that his first memories were living in a small wooden house in Charlotte, which he stated was typical of most black neighborhoods. It was located on an unpaved street and had no electricity or running water. When Sowell was nine, he moved with his extended family from North Carolina to Harlem, New York City. He and his aunt were forced to room in other people's apartments, due to frequent family quarrels. Sowell qualified for Stuyvesant High School, a prestigious academic high school in New York City; he was the first in his family to study beyond the sixth grade. However, he was forced to drop out at age 17 because of financial difficulties and family quarreling. He worked a number of odd jobs, including long hours at a machine shop, and as a delivery man for Western Union. He also tried out for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948. Sowell was drafted into the armed services in 1951 during the Korean War and was assigned to the U.S. Marine Corps. Although Sowell opposed the war and experienced racism, he was able to find fulfillment as a photographer, which eventually became his favorite hobby. He was honorably discharged in 1952.
Higher education and early career After leaving military service, Sowell completed high school, took a civil service job in Washington, D.C., and attended night classes at Howard University, a historically black college. His high scores on the College Board examinations and recommendations by two professors helped him gain admission to Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1958 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics. He earned a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University the following year. Sowell had initially chosen Columbia University to study under George Stigler, who would later receive the Nobel Prize in Economics, but when he learned that Stigler had moved to the University of Chicago, he followed him there and studied for his doctorate under Stigler upon arriving in the fall of 1959. Sowell has said that he was a Marxist during his 20s. One of his earliest professional publications was a sympathetic examination of Marxist thought vs. Marxist–Leninist practice. But in 1960, he began to change his mind toward supporting free-market economics after studying the possible impact of minimum wages on unemployment of sugar-industry workers in Puerto Rico, as a U.S. Department of Labor intern. Workers at the department were surprised by his questioning, he said, and he concluded, "they certainly weren't going to engage in any scrutiny of the law". Sowell received his Doctor of Philosophy in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968. His dissertation was titled "Say's law and the General glut Controversy".
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