In celebration of our national heritage, we continue our Pride in America series by honoring renowned economist Thomas Sowell.
Thomas Sowell was born in North Carolina in 1930. He was one of five children whom his mother raised alone after his father’s death. In 1939, the family moved to Harlem, New York City. He attended school longer than anyone in his family, but he was forced to drop out of high school at 17 due to financial hardship.
Sowell was drafted into the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War. After his military service as a photographer, he attended Howard University in Washington, D.C. He then transferred to Harvard where he graduated magna cum laude in 1958. He went on to earn a master’s degree in economics from Columbia University, then a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968.
Sowell has held several positions within prestigious academic institutions, including Cornell, Brandeis, and UCLA. He is currently at Stanford University, where he is a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, an organization that describes itself as “a public policy think tank that seeks to improve the human condition by advancing ideas that promote economic opportunity and prosperity, while securing and safeguarding peace for America and all mankind.”
Thomas Sowell has contributed to the experiment of the American Republic in numerous ways, including authoring 45 books on social policy, economics, and race. He is a proponent of free market economics and a critic of government interference in the economy. Sowell is gifted in his ability to convey complex concepts and ideas in a way that can be understood and discussed easily by many. He is a prominent figure in the American Conservative movement and has been featured on countless radio and television programs throughout his career.
The Ford administration offered Sowell the position of Federal Trade Commissioner, but he declined because of his dislike for political game-playing. He was appointed to a position on the Economic Policy Advisory Committee of Ronald Reagan’s administration, but resigned after one meeting. In discussing that decision, Sowell referenced “the opinion of Milton Friedman, that some individuals can contribute more by staying out of government.”
Until 2016, Sowell wrote a nationally syndicated column which was published in Forbes and National Review magazines, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, The New York Post, and other major newspapers. It was also featured online on websites such as RealClearPolitics, Townhall, WorldNetDaily, and the Jewish World Review. He wrote on various relevant social, political, and economic topics in addition to national events, global events, Supreme Court opinions, and government bureaucracy and policies. He was a frequent guest on the Rush Limbaugh show.
According to The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Sowell was the most cited black economist between 1991 and 1995, and the second-most cited between 1971 and 1990. His conservative ideas, thoughts, and explanations have been some of the most important and influential in American politics for 55 years.
