Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story (6 page)

Condi’s year of homeschooling was regimented and intense. Juliemma Smith, a long-time family friend, said that Angelena organized Condi’s day as if she were in a regular classroom, but her lessons were more rigorous. “They didn’t play,” she said. “They had classes, then lunch time and back to classes.” Juliemma, who taught at Davis Elementary and helped John with the church youth fellowship, recalled seeing a reading machine at the house. “Condi learned how to read books quickly with a speed-reading machine. I had heard that President Kennedy used one, but I had never seen one before. That was also the first time I heard of homeschooling. Angelena and John were just interested in Condi maturing and getting the best of everything. It paid off.”

Angelena also wanted Condi to have every chance to develop into a first-rate pianist, which meant she would need a sharp memory as well as excellent technique. Mother and daughter spent long hours together exploring the worlds of music and language and art, both at home and on trips into the city. And Condi adored her for it. “My mother was stunningly beautiful,” she said. “She was tremendously talented. . . . I remember how much exposure she gave me to the arts. I remember when I was six she bought me this recording of
Aida
.”

Angelena’s unflagging guidance of Condi’s musical training from a very early age is typical of parents who have produced world-class musicians. Many of the great pianists had, like Condi, at least one musically trained parent who nurtured their talents early and was devoted to the child’s training. Van Cliburn, for example, began taking piano lessons from his mother at age three and studied with her until he entered Juilliard at age seventeen. Earl Wild heard classical music in the home from the day he was born and also began taking lessons from his mother at age three. Claudio Arrau began lessons with his mother as a toddler and read music before he read words. Clara Haskil, Alicia de Larrocha, Glenn Gould, and Arthur Rubinstein (one of Condi’s favorite pianists) each received very early encouragement. Duke Ellington also started piano lessons as a child, and even though he often complained that he would rather be out playing baseball, his parents made him stick with it.

The benefits of a family background in music, dedicated parents, an exceptional aptitude that is recognized early (often at age three), a deep feeling for music, and prodigious raw talent have been the prerequisites for most great performers. Condi possessed all of them.

Angelena knew that her daughter was exceptional in many areas, as did the rest of the family. “My sister always knew that Condoleezza was a different child,” said Genoa Ray. To confirm their notion that she was gifted, the Rices took Condi to Southern University in Baton Rouge for psychological testing. The results were undoubtedly impressive because Angelena told the family, “I knew my baby was a genius!”

The first song Condi learned to play on the piano was “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” and shortly afterward she began “accompanying” her mother at church by sitting beside her on the organ bench. At age four, she mastered a handful of pieces and gave her first recital. The intense focus on piano cut into her playtime, as did the other projects Angelena set up for her. Condi spent more time indoors—practicing piano and French—than did most of the other girls on the block. Two girls who lived across the street remembered “waiting for what seemed like hours for her to finish her latest Beethoven or Mozart and come outside.” When she did come out to play hopscotch or jump rope or play school, it wasn’t usually for long. “[She] wasn’t an outdoors child, running in the neighborhood,” recalled Ann Downing, one of Angelena’s neighbors and a member of her church. “She played with her parents, her family more or less,” she said. Angelena and John lived to fill Condi’s waking hours with productive, enriching experiences; to pour as much knowledge and culture into her young, impressive mind as possible. This dedication was based on love as much as on their longstanding family standards of achievement.

A specific incident sheds light on the depth of Angelena’s devotion. Mrs. Downing dropped in one day while Angelena was ironing the tiny lace edges of Condi’s anklet socks. “What in the world are you doing?” she asked. “I just love her so much,” replied Angelena. Mrs. Downing then remarked that with so much love, she should have another child. “I can’t take this love from Condi,” she said. John Rice held an equal amount of reverence for his daughter and felt an equal obligation to give her every opportunity. One member of John’s congregation recalled him saying, “Condi doesn’t belong to us. She belongs to God.”

By the time she began elementary school, Condi was already a serious music student and more ready to get down to business than most of her classmates. One day, while the other students were noisily blowing on their plastic flutophones and generally raising a ruckus, Condi raised her voice above the din and said to her teacher, “I’m waiting for my instructions. And would you please write the music down for me?” She was accustomed to paying attention, behaving well, and keeping an orderly routine. She acted mature because that was the way she was treated at home. “John and Angelena were the perfect parents,” said Moses Brewer, a friend of Condi’s from the University of Denver. “They never talked to her like she was a child, which is why she was mature beyond her years.” Some of her schoolmates took this maturity and perfectionism, as well as her dainty manners and habit of walking nearly on her tiptoes, as a sign of being prissy. But Condi got bored in situations where time was being wasted. And after seven years of piano, she got bored with that, too.

“I remember when I was about ten I really wanted to quit playing the piano,” she said. “I had been a child prodigy, now I was ten, there were lots of kids who could play the piano at ten.” For Condi, the uniqueness of being “the cute little piano prodigy” was over and she was ready to move on to something else. “[But] my mother said you’re not old enough or good enough to make that decision, and she was right.”

Instead, she enrolled in a local conservatory and took her playing to a new level. At age ten, she entered the Birmingham Southern Conservatory of Music, which had recently opened its doors to black students. “I think I was the first black student to go to that newly integrated conservatory,” she said, “and I began to compete in piano at that point.” The conservatory also introduced her to the basics of flute and violin, which rounded out her private study of ballet and French. And in her spare time, Condi tackled a carefully selected pile of books—always the best literature for her age group. One of the down-sides of her attentive mother’s efforts was that books were always an assignment, never a relaxing way to escape. “I grew up in a family in which my parents put me into every book club,” she said. “So I never developed the fine art of recreational reading.”

Another way Angelena sought to expand Condi’s horizons was to enroll her in different public schools, exposing her to a variety of social and educational experiences. At every school—as well as in all of her extracurricular activities—she was told to go beyond what was expected of her, always hand in work that was above average, always rise to the top. This was the unwritten yet firm law of Titusville families: to raise children who were “twice as good” as white kids to gain an equal footing and “three times as good” to surpass them. This was the driving force behind the high, uncompromising standards that the Rays and the Rices expected of their children. By encouraging them to always be far above average, they gave them the best shot at competing at an equal level when they left the secure enclave of Titusville and their families. “It wasn’t as if someone said, ‘You have to be twice as good’ and ‘Isn’t that a pity’ or ‘Isn’t that wrong,’” Condi said. “It was just, ‘You have to be twice as good.’”

“My parents were very strategic,” she explained. “I was going to be so well prepared, and I was going to do all of these things that were revered in white society so well, that I would be armored somehow from racism. I would be able to confront white society on its own terms.” Children who asked their parents about racist comments they overheard or about Jim Crow codes they observed on a rare trip to another part of Birmingham were told not to worry about it: “It’s not your problem.”

Condi’s mother refused to play by the Jim Crow rules, and Condi witnessed several episodes, usually on shopping trips, in which Angelena stood her ground. One confrontation took place at a downtown department store, where Angelena and Condi were browsing through girls’ dresses. Condi picked one that she wanted to try on, and the two walked toward a “whites only” dressing room. A white salesperson blocked their path and took the dress out of Condi’s hand. “She’ll have to try it on in there,” she told Angelena, pointing to a storage room. Without batting an eye, Angelena told the woman that her daughter would be allowed to try on her dress in a real dressing room or she would go and spend her money elsewhere. Angelena was composed, firm, and resolved. Aware that the elegantly dressed black woman before her would not stand down, the clerk decided that her commission was worth more than a public incident, and she ushered them into a dressing room as far from view as possible. “I remember the woman standing there guarding the door, worried to death she was going to lose her job,” said Condi.

A painful memory of many black Birmingham children was not being able to go to the circus when it came to town or visit the local amusement park, Kiddieland. One of Condi’s aunts recalled how upset her niece became when she learned she couldn’t visit the Alabama State Fair that was advertised all over the radio and the television once a year, tempting children with visions of petting zoos and carnival rides. “She just could not understand” why she could not go to the fair whenever she wanted, said Connie Ray. But for the most part, Condi’s parents shielded her from such disappointments, especially Kiddieland. With its Ferris wheels, carousel, cotton-candy stands, bumper cars, and other bright attractions, the whites-only park was a constant reminder that the city was divided in two. On one day each year, the park opened its gates to blacks, but the Rices never went. John and Angelena tried to keep Kiddieland out of Condi’s mind entirely, and it appeared to work. “I don’t remember being distressed,” she said. Besides, John and Angelena took her to Coney Island in Brooklyn one summer while John was taking summer courses at Columbia. John tried to downplay Kiddieland to all the kids who felt disappointed over not being able to go. Condi recalled that her father told one child, “You don’t want to go to Kiddieland. We’ll go to Disneyland.”

Condi’s parents taught her about the greater opportunities that lie beyond Birmingham, the rewards that awaited her for her hard work and high goals. “My parents had to try to explain why we wouldn’t go to the circus,” she said, “why we had to drive all the way to Washington, D.C., before we could stay in a hotel. And they had to explain why I could not have a hamburger in a restaurant but I could be president anyway, which was the way they chose to handle the situation.”

John Rice played a role in many young lives in Titusville. He had a hearty laugh, jovial outlook, imposing presence, and tireless commitment to the community. According to Condi’s second cousin Connie Rice, John was somewhat of an anomaly in his stoic line. “The Rices were kind of joyless except for Condi’s dad,” she said. His outgoing, positive outlook endeared him to the young people who came to him for guidance at school, church, and at the fellowship center he founded.

The after-school and weekend fellowship was actually a mini-academy, a place where students could study after school with teachers John brought in from the black high schools, learn how to play chess, and analyze famous works of art through field trips to museums. He also organized sports teams and set up parent-approved co-ed dances on the weekends. “He was a big man,” said Margaret Cheatham, one of the teachers who came in to tutor kids in math, algebra, and geometry. “They were amazed to see him play basketball.”

Reverend William Jones, the current pastor at Westminster Presbyterian in Birmingham, noted that John spearheaded another important organization at the church, a Boy Scout troop. He put tremendous energy, discipline, and leadership into it, which was proven by the fact that two of his scouts ascended to the highest rank. “John’s scouts made up one of the strongest troops in Birmingham, if not the strongest,” said Reverend Jones. “They had so many accomplishments, including making two Eagle Scouts. Some troops never make one in their history, but there were two from that troop. That takes years of education and commitment from the boys and from the leadership.” Only 4 percent of all Boy Scouts become Eagle Scouts, a process that involves many hours of community service as well as learning skills that lead to merit badges.

To say that John Rice was a tireless youth leader and educator is an understatement. In addition to his ministry, teaching and counseling jobs, coaching duties, and youth fellowship activities, he was also very active in the larger community. He helped set up the first Head Start center in Birmingham soon after the program was launched in Washington in 1965. He helped black youth find part-time and summer jobs as a staff member at the Birmingham Youth Opportunity Center located downtown. He was the first black person to work on that state agency staff.

As a high school guidance counselor, John had many opportunities to talk to kids about colleges and the steps necessary to be accepted into them. He tutored students for standardized tests and pressed them to take stock of their dreams and turn them into reality. He had a gift for offering both practical advice and emotional inspiration, cheering each student on to think big, dream big, and follow through. The principal of Ullman High, where John was a guidance counselor, was the uncle of Alma Powell, wife of Secretary of State Colin Powell. Her father was also a principal at another school, and she recalled that they often spoke about the Reverend John Wesley Rice as “this fine young man they were so lucky to have in Birmingham.” The kids called him “Rev,” and his daughter was crazy about him. The two were very close.