condoleezza rice extraordinary ordinary people

Her parents introduced Rice to their passions early on: She began taking piano lessons at age 3 and as a preschooler accompanied her father to high school football games. Like many contemporaries, her parents viewed education, Rice writes, as 'a kind of armor shielding me against everything - even the deep racism in Birmingham and across America.'

Both parents were teachers indeed they were given to 'educational evangelism' focused not only on their daughter but on young people in the larger community. Her name reflects her mother's Italian heritage and love of music. Rice's account of her parents and her family life in Alabama and later in Denver complicates what many think they know about one of the most prominent women in recent history and provides a compelling portrait of the life of a middle-class Southern black family during these transitional decades.Īngelena Ray Rice and John Wesley Rice are the dominant forces in the life of their only child, Condoleezza. Though the last third provides a cursory account of the academic and professional trajectory that culminates with her appointment in the Bush administration, the book, at its core, is a coming-of-age story during the final years of segregation and its aftermath. Bush will not find them in Rice's 'Extraordinary, Ordinary People.' The subtitle, 'A Memoir of Family,' describes the focus and scope of this engaging book. Readers looking for insights into Rice's thinking and actions as national security advisor and secretary of state under President George W. The episode revealed the fragility of the protective environment Rice's parents sought to create for her in the South's most segregated city: They were virtually powerless in the face of what Rice describes as the 'homegrown terrorism' directed against Birmingham's black children. In the paralyzing fear of that moment, no one knew if other churches were targeted. 15, 1963, 8-year-old Condoleezza Rice was in her father's church when a loud thud echoed from the explosion that killed four young girls at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church across town in Birmingham, Ala.

Condoleezza rice extraordinary ordinary people