Extraordinary, Ordinary People

by Condoleezza Rice

  I gained a number of insights on Daddy’s teaching and leadership at the University of Denver after reviewing his papers stored in the Special Collections division of DU’s Penrose Library. I am especially grateful to Steve Fisher, curator of the university’s Archives and Special Collections, and Jennifer Thompson, associate dean at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, for making these documents available to me. I am also grateful to Jim Berscheidt, associate vice chancellor for university communications, for supplying me with photographs from my time in Professor Korbel’s classroom. I also reviewed articles about my father and his courses that appeared in the Denver Post, the Denver Clarion, and the Rocky Mountain News.

  In writing about my tenure at Stanford, I consulted materials and multimedia from the Stanford News Service, the Stanford Report, the Stanford Daily, and the Palo Alto Weekly. Assistant University Archivist Aimee Morgan helped to track down facts and historical information.

  A partial list of sources appears below.

  Bush, George. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George Bush, 1989–1991, 4 volumes. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1990–1992.

  Bush, George, and Brent Scowcroft. A World Transformed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.

  Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.

  Eskew, Glenn T. But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

  Kennedy, John F. “Radio and Television Report to the American People on Civil Rights: June 11, 1963,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1963. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1964.

  Nunnelley, William A. Bull Connor. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991.

  Ostermann, Christian F. (ed.). The End of the Cold War. Cold War International History Project Bulletin, issue 12/13. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2001.

  Rice, John W., Jr. “Black Studies Programs at the University of Denver, 1969–1970.” Report to Chancellor Maurice B. Mitchell, University of Denver, Denver, CO, June 20, 1970 (unpublished).

  ———. “The Black Experience in America.” Course pamphlets, University of Denver, Denver, CO, 1970–1973 (unpublished).

  Zelikow, Philip, and Condoleezza Rice. Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  WRITING THIS book has been an exceptional journey, allowing me to revisit memories of my extraordinary, ordinary parents and our family and to reconnect with the communities in which I grew up and worked: Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Denver, South Bend, Palo Alto, and Washington, D.C. I want to thank those who have contributed to this effort and who have helped me to recount and, in some cases, learn anew my family’s story.

  First and foremost, I could not have done this work without my family. My aunt Gee, my uncle Alto and his wife, Connie, and my late aunt Mattie spent countless hours helping to reconstruct the narrative of the Rices and the Rays. My father’s first cousin, Philip Rice, and my cousins Lativia Ray Alston, Yvonne Ray German, Albert Ray, Patrice Ray Cathwright, Denise Bonds Williams, and Connie Rice contributed greatly to this endeavor, as did my stepmother, Clara Bailey Rice, and my stepbrother, Greg. Edythe Williams Jones, my maternal grandmother’s cousin, who is ninety, used her still-ironclad memory to enrich my understanding of our family story. Many of the photographs included in this book surfaced thanks to the willingness of friends and family—particularly Yvonne, Clara, Louis Olave, and Chris McNair—to search hard and long for the best images of our lives together.

  I was able to spend numerous hours immersed in old memories, both good and bad, with my childhood friends Deborah Cheatham Carson, Freeman Hrabowski, Carole Smitherman, Vanessa Hunter, and Velda Robinson and with my dear friend Mary Bush. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Eva Carter, one of my father’s “youth fellowship kids,” Westminster Presbyterian Church hosted a day of remembering with Carolyn Armstrong, Margaret Cheatham, Gloria and Harold Dennard, Ann Downing, Linda Harris, Willie Harton, Lillian Ford, Eugenia Henry, Julia Emma Smith, Leola Smith, Elaine Thompson, and Cora Williams, all members of my father’s congregation. I am also grateful for the stories Carol Watkins shared with me about my mother.

  I want to thank the city of Fairfield and the Fairfield Industrial High School Alumni Association for hosting a wonderful lunch at which I met several of my parents’ first colleagues and students, including members of Daddy’s football team and girls and boys basketball teams. Their stories of my parents’ early life together were largely unknown to me until that session. And thanks to the great Willie Mays for sharing his memories of my mother and father.

  Similarly, Eva and the staff of the Hoover Library in Hoover, Alabama, arranged a session at which my father’s and mother’s colleagues from the Birmingham Public Schools and many of the students in the youth fellowship and Cavaliers programs participated. It was wonderful to hear the firsthand testimony of Raymond Goolsby, Helen Heath, George Hunter III, Dannetta Thornton Owens, Ricky Powell, John Smith, James Stewart, and John Springer. I will always remember my moving encounter with the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, and I thank his wife, Sephira, for making our recent reunion possible.

  Jim Baggett of the Birmingham Public Library’s archives department, and Wayne Coleman of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, helped me document the historic events of the civil rights era. And my friend and colleague, historian Clay Carson, graciously read the portions of the manuscript that dealt with that period.

  I talked, too, with many family friends in Denver, South Bend, and Palo Alto, including my father’s great mentor, the late John Blackburn, and my college buddies Jim and Ann Lampman and Debbie and Rich Griffin. I benefited greatly from the efforts of Steve Fisher, the curator of the Penrose Library Archives and Special Collections at the University of Denver; Jennifer Thompson, associate dean at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies; and Jim Berscheidt, associate vice chancellor for university communications at DU.

  Randy Bean, Chip Blacker, Mariann Byerwalter, Nancy Hubbell Biffar, Gerhard Casper, Susan Ford Dorsey, Mary Edmonds, Jendayi Frazer, Wendy Frieman, Steve Krasner, Tim Warner, Mia Jackson, Louis Olave, Jane Robinette, Gene Washington, Lori White, and Amy Zegart all contributed stories that brought my graduate school days and early professional life into sharper relief. Aimee Morgan, the assistant university archivist at Stanford, and Michele Futornick of the Stanford News Service were helpful in tracking down facts and photographs of my time at the university. Bonnie Burlbaw at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum as well as Colin Powell and members of his staff, especially Peggy Cifrino, assisted me in compiling photographs from my time in government.

  I could not have completed this book without the support of the Hoover Institution and Stanford University. I particularly want to thank Director John Raisian and my friends Tom and Barbara Stephenson, who are the generous benefactors of my fellowship.

  I have been blessed with the help of a wonderful staff. Colby Cooper and Anne Lyons followed me to Stanford from Washington, bringing not just their invaluable experience but also an unwavering commitment to helping me reestablish my life in California. This book could not have been completed without the efforts of Caroline Beswick, who keeps me on schedule and on time, and my trusted assistant of more than a decade, Marilyn Stanley, who never ceases to amaze me with her sixth sense about what needs to be done before I even say it.

  My research assistants, Leisel Bogan, Daniel Slate, Dianna Bai, and Jenny Arriola, as well as my student assistants, Taylor Jackson, Emma Welch, and Natalie Davies, were true bloodhounds in unearthing materials for the book.

  And what can I say to Theo Milonopoulos and Cameron Bell, except thank you for your patience and care in checking and rechecking every detail, reading and rereadin
g every word, and helping to make this book a far better one than it would have been without your exceptional dedication and commitment.

  I’d like to thank my team at Crown Publishing and William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, particularly Tina Constable and Suzanne Gluck for their comments and direction. Thanks also to Wayne Kabak for his continuing support and interest in me.

  And, finally, I want to express my deepest gratitude to my talented editor, Rick Horgan, who now knows every twist and turn in the story of the Rices and the Rays. Rick has always found just the right touch in helping me to make this a better book while always remembering that this is a deeply personal story—and giving me the space to tell it in exactly that way.