Clarence Thomas was a long-time member of the editorial board of the Lincoln Institute's Lincoln Review. Thomas was a protege of J.A. Parker, head of the Lincoln Institute, who was the Reagan Transition Team coordinator for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which Thomas was later named to direct.

The Lincoln Institute is sometimes described as a Black conservative group, but a more accurate description is that it was a far-right group that worked in coalition with pro-apartheid forces, and fascist anti-Semitic groups that were sufficiently anti-Marxist.

Parker, a former registered agent for the South African government, was on the board of the Council for National Policy along with other pro-apartheid individuals and at least one former member of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan.

The Lincoln Institute, with which Clarence was affiliated in an official capacity for close to ten years, was also a member group in the Coalition for Peace Through Strength. As author Russ Bellant discusses in his two books (see below) and elsewhere, the Coalition included a number of racist, pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic groups

Here is an excerpt from an article by Deborah Toler on Black Conservatives in The Public Eye Magazine (September 1993)  from Political Research Associates. The text has been modified slightly to update it.

"The Lincoln Institute & Clarence Thomas" by Deborah Toler

In terms of institutional structures for disseminating Black conservative ideas, the Lincoln Institute for Research and Education in Washington, DC, was the bastion of Black conservatism. Founded by Jay A. Parker in 1978, the Institute illustrated the typically overlooked importance of Black conservatives to conservative US foreign policy agendas.

From its founding, the Lincoln Institute had close ties to the extreme rightist World Anti-Communist League (WACL). WACL aggressively supported right-wing governments and military movements in Central America and Southern Africa, such as the Contras in Nicaragua, the ARENA Party in El Salvador, UNITA in Angola, RENAMO in Mozambique, and the Inkatha Freedom Party in South Africa, among others. Parker served on the Board of the US WACL affiliate and Lee Edwards, another Lincoln Institute founder, was a principal WACL organizer in the United States and WACL's registered agent in 1982.

Clarence Thomas, widely portrayed as a neoconservative, is a classic illustration of the murkiness of the dividing line between mainstream conservatives and ultra-conservatives. Clarence Thomas and Jay A. Parker served together on Ronald Reagan's 1980 transition team for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). According to Parker, the team "argued strenuously" against affirmative action, which they viewed as "a new racism."

By March 1981, Parker had become a registered agent for the South African homeland of Venda. In June 1981, Clarence Thomas joined the Advisory Board of the Lincoln Institute's quarterly publication, The Lincoln Review. At the same time, Thomas became an Assistant Secretary of Education. Parker's Justice Department filings state that soon after he began representing Venda, he held discussions with US Department of Education officials about his client.

In 1985, Parker and William Keyes, the former Reagan aide (and a contributing editor for The Lincoln Review), founded a lobbying organization called International Public Affairs Consultants, Inc. (IPAC). That same year, IPAC began representing the South African Embassy. Clarence Thomas was listed as one of a handful of guests attending an IPAC dinner for the South African Ambassador in 1987. In 1984, Keyes started Black PAC, with Parker serving as treasurer, to work for Jesse Helms's re-election, and to oppose the "terrorist outlaw" African National Congress (ANC) and "extremists" such as Jesse Jackson and the Congressional Black Caucus. In June 1987, the conservative weekly Human Events reported that Thomas, then of the EEOC, and Clarence Pendleton, who was then Reagan's chair of the US Civil Rights Commission, attended a Black PAC strategy session to plan for important political battles being waged in Congress.

Also in June 1987, Thomas made a well-known speech at the Heritage Foundation, in which he said: "A few dissidents like Thomas Sowell and J. A. Parker stand steadfast, refusing to give in to the cult mentality and childish obedience that hypnotize black Americans into a mindless political trance. I admire them, and only wish I had a fraction of their courage and strength."

Thomas remained on The Lincoln Review's Advisory Board throughout the period Parker and Keyes represented the South African government, resigning at the time he was appointed to the Federal Court of Appeals in March 1990.

http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v07n3/Blackcon-02.html

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For more documentation, see:

Bill Berkowitz, "The Conservative Movement's Long-Time Hate Affair With Nelson Mandela,"http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18354-conservative -hate-nelson-mandela

Thomas Frank, The Wrecking Crew, pp. 315-321 (Notes). See also Frank for his research on the CIA-linked anti-apartheid group International Freedom Foundation and the International Freedom Review.

Scott Anderson Jon Lee Anderson, Inside the League: The Shocking Exposé of How Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc. 1986).

Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Collier Books, 1988).

Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right and the Reagan Administration: The Role of Domestic Fascist Networks in the Republican Party and Their Effect on U.S. Cold War Policies (Boston, Mass.: South End Press and Political Research Associates, 1991).

Russ Bellant, The Coors Connection: How Coors Family Philanthropy Undermines Democratic Pluralism (Boston: South End Press and Political Research Associates, 1991).