Condoleezza Rice

Condoleezza Rice (born 1954) is a classic over-achiever. Growing up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, Rice refused to let the boundaries set by society limit her. She has become a close adviser to President George W. Bush, involved in decisions that shape the future of the United States of America.

Rice Groomed For Success

Condoleezza Rice was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on November 14, 1954. Her father, John Wesley Rice, was a school guidance counselor during the week and a Presbyterian minister on the weekends. Her mother, Angelena, was a schoolteacher. The family lived in a middle-class, black community called Titusville, where education was a high priority for children who were expected to succeed regardless of any prejudices or boundaries.

John and Angelena Rice tried to give everything possible to their young daughter, providing intangible support by developing her sense of pride, faith, and responsibility. "They wanted the world," Connie Rice (a second cousin to Rice) said in a biography by Antonia Felix entitled Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story. "They wanted Rice to be free of any kind of shackles, mentally or physically, and they wanted her to own the world. And to give a child that kind of entitlement, you have to love her to death and make her believe that she can fly." John Rice coached football and taught his daughter everything he could about tactics and strategy. Rice grew to love the game and would follow football wherever she went.

Terror in Birmingham

In the early 1960s, the civil rights movement landed in Birmingham. Schoolchildren were encouraged to participate in marches and other demonstrations. The Rice family did not join in but sometimes went down to watch history unfold. "My father was not a march-in-the street preacher," Rice said in the biography. "He saw no reason to put children at risk. He would never put his own child at risk." Unfortunately, sometimes the police would use fire hoses to spray the children, or dogs would chase the children. Some of the young adults arrested were John Rice's students. Television cameras caught it all on tape for the nation to see.

Events that were stirring the emotions of the nation were occurring right in Birmingham when Rice was only eight years old. Vigilantes bombed the home of a family friend, Arthur Shores, twice in the fall of 1963. On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed, killing four young girls attending Sunday school. One of the girls, Denise Nair, was Rice's friend from school. Rice had heard the explosion and felt the shudder of the blast. She remembers her father and the other men from the neighborhood organizing to patrol the streets at night with shotguns. She was growing up with terrorism. The Rice family watched on television when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964. Not long after, the family went to dinner at a previously all-white restaurant in Birmingham.

Rice was a bright student and skipped both first and seventh grade. Her parents encouraged her to do well in everything she tried, and they provided lessons in piano, ballet, violin, French, and skating, and instruction in dress, grooming, and manners. In 1965, she was the first black student to attend music classes at Birmingham Southern Conservatory of Music.

When Rice was 11 years old, her father accepted a position in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, as a college administrator. Two years after that, he accepted a position as vice chancellor at the University of Denver in Colorado. For the first time, Rice attended integrated school at St. Mary's Academy, a private Catholic school. During her first year, a school counselor advised her that she was not college material, despite her excellent grades and musical and athletic accomplishments. "Condi was stunned, but her parents— immune to talk of limitation or failure—didn't flinch," stated Felix in the biography. "They assured her that the assessment was wrong and that she should just ignore it."

Became Interested in Politics

At age 15, Rice graduated from high school and started attending the University of Denver, hoping to become a concert pianist. She won a young artist's competition and was invited to play Mozart's Piano Concerto in D Minor with the Denver Symphony Orchestra. Although she was a talented performer, she knew that the competition for professional performers was stiff. Partway through college, she decided she would never become a concert pianist. She took a course called "Introduction to International Politics." Her professor, Dr. Josef Korbel, a Soviet specialist and the father of Madeleine Albright (who later became secretary of state under President Bill Clinton), inspired her. She changed her major to political science. Rice was an avid student, and in 1974, she earned her bachelor's degree in political science (cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) at age 19. She was awarded the Political Science Honors Award for "outstanding accomplishment and promise in the field of political science." She went on to get her Master's degree in government and international studies at Notre Dame University in just one year. She returned to Denver, unsure of what to do next.