As a little girl, Condoleezza Rice posed in a sundress in front
of the White House. Decades later, Rice worked in the White
House as the second woman, and the first African-American woman,
in history to be Secretary of State and the first woman to serve
as national security advisor. In her new memoir, Extraordinary,
Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family, Condoleezza shares stories
of her childhood growing up in the racially segregated South as
a little girl who was not even sure she’d be allowed to sit on a
white Santa Claus’ lap.Condi Rice’s educator parents raised her
in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1950s and 1960s, where her father
was also a Presbyterian minister. As a child, she played with a
youngster named Denise McNair, who was later killed in the
bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963.
Condoleezza’s parents would not go to protest marches, however.
Her father was not the sort of man to back down from a fight and
he worried that he’d get into a tangle with the cops and be
killed. Inst