Free Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story by Antonia Felix Page B
Authors: Antonia Felix
home, Fannie Lou committed herself to the SNCC and traveled throughout the country speaking about the cause and helping people register. She eventually cofounded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and alerted millions of Americans to the South’s voting abuses via televised coverage of the Democratic National Convention in 1964.
“I will never forget meeting . . . Fannie Lou Hamer when I was a teenager,” she said in her speech to the Stanford graduating class of 2002. “She was not sophisticated in the way we think of it, yet so compelling that I remember the power of her message even today. In 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer refused to listen to those who told her that a sharecropper with a sixth-grade education could not, or should not, launch a challenge that would dismantle the racist infrastructure of Mississippi’s Democratic party. She did it anyway.”
In 1974, after five years of teaching, John Rice’s position was upgraded from instructor to adjunct history professor. Although this title still did not carry the perks of an assistant professorship, such as insurance benefits, a higher pay scale, or the opportunity to move toward a tenure-track position, it did not impede John’s ability to do well for his family. He was covered by a benefits package through his administrative positions and, for him, the bonus of the teaching job was his ability to make an impact on the black studies program at the university. For the first time, he taught at the college level about issues that he had encountered first hand, from the segregation laws of the Jim Crow South to the demonstrations in Birmingham to the impact of education on forming black leaders. The day-to-day, frontline work he had done as a minister, counselor, and teacher in Birmingham became the material for teaching a new generation about what it meant to grow up black in the South.
John Rice held a variety of administrative positions at the university during the thirteen years he worked there. In addition to his job as assistant director of admissions, he became the assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 1969 and was promoted to associate dean in 1973. He served a brief stint as assistant vice chancellor for student affairs and in 1974 became vice chancellor of university resources.
As associate dean, John Rice helped turn the university into a black intellectual center. “DU is more aware of minority problems and is seemingly striving to do more about them than ever before,” he said in 1972. “I feel we really have the ball rolling . . . toward making this school one of the few ones with real sense of the pluralism in American life.” He announced a new dedication to finding additional black instructors and encouraging more black student participation in campus organizations. “I feel there is a total awareness of black culture on campus now,” he continued, “and I hope to create a deeper understanding of it throughout the coming year.”
Even more than the job security or the teaching opportunities, John and Angelena felt that the most attractive aspect of the university was its location. The move to Denver was a fundamentally positive change for their daughter.
For a black high school student like Condi in 1969, the 1,300-mile stretch between Tuscaloosa and Denver was nothing compared to the qualitative distance between them. Even the dramatic contrast in climate, from the wet and humid tropics of Alabama to the airy heights of Denver that receive an average of sixty inches of snow each year, was a milder shift than the change of overall sensibility between Tuscaloosa and Englewood, the cozy Denver suburb where Condi began high school. Englewood bordered South Denver, the neighborhood in which the Rices bought their house when they moved to the city. Condi enrolled in St. Mary’s Academy, a private Catholic school and vastly different than any school she had attended in Alabama. At thirteen, she was in an integrated school for
“I will never forget meeting . . . Fannie Lou Hamer when I was a teenager,” she said in her speech to the Stanford graduating class of 2002. “She was not sophisticated in the way we think of it, yet so compelling that I remember the power of her message even today. In 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer refused to listen to those who told her that a sharecropper with a sixth-grade education could not, or should not, launch a challenge that would dismantle the racist infrastructure of Mississippi’s Democratic party. She did it anyway.”
In 1974, after five years of teaching, John Rice’s position was upgraded from instructor to adjunct history professor. Although this title still did not carry the perks of an assistant professorship, such as insurance benefits, a higher pay scale, or the opportunity to move toward a tenure-track position, it did not impede John’s ability to do well for his family. He was covered by a benefits package through his administrative positions and, for him, the bonus of the teaching job was his ability to make an impact on the black studies program at the university. For the first time, he taught at the college level about issues that he had encountered first hand, from the segregation laws of the Jim Crow South to the demonstrations in Birmingham to the impact of education on forming black leaders. The day-to-day, frontline work he had done as a minister, counselor, and teacher in Birmingham became the material for teaching a new generation about what it meant to grow up black in the South.
John Rice held a variety of administrative positions at the university during the thirteen years he worked there. In addition to his job as assistant director of admissions, he became the assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 1969 and was promoted to associate dean in 1973. He served a brief stint as assistant vice chancellor for student affairs and in 1974 became vice chancellor of university resources.
As associate dean, John Rice helped turn the university into a black intellectual center. “DU is more aware of minority problems and is seemingly striving to do more about them than ever before,” he said in 1972. “I feel we really have the ball rolling . . . toward making this school one of the few ones with real sense of the pluralism in American life.” He announced a new dedication to finding additional black instructors and encouraging more black student participation in campus organizations. “I feel there is a total awareness of black culture on campus now,” he continued, “and I hope to create a deeper understanding of it throughout the coming year.”
Even more than the job security or the teaching opportunities, John and Angelena felt that the most attractive aspect of the university was its location. The move to Denver was a fundamentally positive change for their daughter.
For a black high school student like Condi in 1969, the 1,300-mile stretch between Tuscaloosa and Denver was nothing compared to the qualitative distance between them. Even the dramatic contrast in climate, from the wet and humid tropics of Alabama to the airy heights of Denver that receive an average of sixty inches of snow each year, was a milder shift than the change of overall sensibility between Tuscaloosa and Englewood, the cozy Denver suburb where Condi began high school. Englewood bordered South Denver, the neighborhood in which the Rices bought their house when they moved to the city. Condi enrolled in St. Mary’s Academy, a private Catholic school and vastly different than any school she had attended in Alabama. At thirteen, she was in an integrated school for