For 16 years, 25,000 letters sat in Prof. Anita Hill's (HELLER) basement, gathering dust and paying silent tribute to a time when details of Hill's private life were broadcast over most news channels.In 1991, Hill spoke out against her former boss, Clarence Thomas, then a nominee for U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Despite Hill's accusations that Thomas had sexually harassed her while they worked together at the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, he was appointed.

During the Senate hearings in which she testified against Thomas, Hill, now a professor of social policy, law and women's studies at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, began receiving thousands of letters from people who'd heard about the hearings.

By 1992, Hill had received roughly 19,000 such letters.

Curious to find out how Americans had reacted to her decision to testify against Thomas, Hill initially read a certain portion of the letters she received each day.

"I gave myself a daily assignment to read so many letters ... in '91 and '92 just to see what was in them," Hill said.

Yet, despite her enthusiasm, Hill found it almost impossible to read the thousands of letters piling up in her mailbox.

She decided to wait until she was able to categorize the letters in an organized system before reading any further.

"I just got overwhelmed in terms of the numbers," she said.

In 1991, Bea Porter, a retired librarian, volunteered to help Hill develop a system of organizing the letters.

Porter divided the letters into categories, including "supportive, non-supportive, professional colleagues, personal friends and harassment stories," Hill wrote in an e-mail to the Justice.

Sixteen years later, confident that this organized system would make her task significantly easier, Hill pledged to read every letter she'd ever received in a single year.

Hill felt that she had a responsibility to read the letters.

"At some point, even though I had not made the time to begin to read them, I realized that [the letters are] personal correspondence, and I felt that I had an obligation to read them if I could," she said.

"One of the things I think sort of pushed me into gear was that about a year ago, someone was talking and said, 'You know, it's been 16 years since the hearing,' and I thought, 'Wow, that's a long time to have this mail.'"

Among the 25,000 letters, Hill found a mixture of ardent support and disdain for her controversial role in the Senate hearings.

"Part of what the sorting [system] did was to sort out the positive from the negative," she said. "The overwhelming majority [of letters] were positive, but there were a significant number of letters that were negative as well."

Yet Hill found even negative opinions intriguing.

"Even [from] the negative [letters], you can even learn something," she said. "You can't completely discount it because maybe they're not flattering or put you in the best light."

Hill explained that there wasn't just one type of person who wrote to her. She said she received letters from people of both sexes, various ages and a range of ethnic backgrounds.

Hill's accusations against Thomas prompted a wide range of responses. While some people were interested in the political implications of Hill's testimony, others identified personally with her decision.

"Some people relate to [these incidents] on a political basis; some people relate to them on a personal basis. They provoke different kinds of behavior and different kinds of reactions," she said.

"A lot of people [who wrote to me] were angry, a lot of people found humor in the scene that they saw, and in a lot of people it created a better understanding of something that they had gone through."

For Hill, it was interesting to see how people came to conclusions about "whose side to take" in the hearings against Thomas.

"Some people say, 'Well, I've listened to both sides, I've read the newspapers, and I've talked to my friends.' Some people draw on their own personal experiences, and they say, 'Oh, this is just like what happened to me,'" Hill said. "And that's one thing that I was exploring-how people come to . their own understanding of what happened during the hearing."

Reading thousands of letters, Hill found that while everyone reacted differently to the hearings, her decision to speak out against Thomas affected some on a very personal level.

Hill said some people liked to tell stories. She relayed, "'This is the hearing that made me want to get out and get politically engaged and politically active.' Other people might write and say, 'This gave me a chance to talk to my daughter about something or talk to my husband about something that happened to me.'"

Although it's been 17 years since her trial, Hill explained that the letters have not stopped coming in.

"I still get letters, I still get e-mails, I still get all kinds of things even today," Hill said. "In October of 2007, Clarence Thomas wrote a memoir, and that prompted a lot of people to write."

However, Hill explained that she feels grateful for all the letters she receives.

"I think part of the problem is when you go through an experience like I went through in 1991, ... there's an automatic feeling of disconnect and isolation and, 'Gosh, I am the only person who is experiencing this.'"

Yet Hill explained that the letters reminded her how much her decision inspired other Americans.

"The letters made me feel much more connected to a lot of people, people who had maybe gone through a similar experience or sympathized with me and could express what I had experienced and the feelings," she said. "And I really have seen that connection and I think that that has changed me.