Early Life
Rice was born in Birmingham, Alabama, the only child of Angelena (née Ray) Rice, a high school science, music, and oratory teacher, and John Wesley Rice, Jr., a high school guidance counselor and Presbyterian minister. Her name, Condoleezza, derives from the music-related term, con dolcezza, which in Italian means, "with sweetness". Rice has roots in the American South going back to the pre-Civil War era, and some of her ancestors worked as sharecroppers for a time after emancipation. Rice discovered on the PBS series Finding Your Roots that she is of 51% African, 40% European and 9% Native American or Asian genetic descent, while her mtDNA is traced back to the Tikar people of Cameroon. Rice grew up in the Titusville neighborhood at a time when the South was racially segregated.
Read more about this topic: Condoleezza Rice
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candour never waited to be asked for its opinion.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Wherever art appears, life disappears.”
—Francis Picabia (1878–1953)