Photograph
My great-grandfather was illiterate, but my great-grandmother, Julia Head, was a favored household slave who had learned to read as a young girl.
My father at three years old and his sister, Theresa, at five, shown here with my grandparents. Daddy was an easygoing personality and a superb athlete. Theresa was reclusive but brilliant.
The son of sharecroppers, Granddaddy Rice received a scholarship to study at Stillman College after agreeing to become a Presbyterian minister. He was an “educational evangelist,” establishing local schools and impressing upon his students the importance of attending college.
My mother, Angelena (right), at three, and her sister, Mattie, at five. The cute little darlings were featured here as “calendar” girls for the local barbershop.
My maternal grandmother, Mattie Lula Parrom, had rich-brown skin and very high cheekbones, attesting to an ill-defined American Indian heritage. She is pictured here at her graduation from St. Mark’s Academy, a “finishing” school for well-to-do young black women.
After running away from home, my maternal grandfather, Albert Ray III, found himself alone in a train station one evening with just one token in his pocket. “Old Man Wheeler,” the patriarch of a white family, brought him home and raised him with his sons.
Mother (far right), her brother, Alto, and her sister, Gee (far left) were often reminded by their parents to maintain their dignity despite the degrading circumstances of segregated Birmingham. They and their cousin, Kate, are pictured here with my grandfather’s truck.
Daddy completed college and seminary at Johnson C. Smith University in North Carolina. Like his father, he would become an educational evangelist and mentor students in Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Denver, and Palo Alto.
My mother’s students remembered her as an extraordinary beauty but also as a demanding teacher whom they obeyed despite her diminutive stature.
Here I am sitting in Mother’s lap, my little foot poking out from underneath the blanket. Had I been born a boy, my father would have named me John. But Mother got her way—a girl named Condoleezza, meaning “with sweetness.”
Mother believed passionately in the importance of the arts and organized student-led performances wherever she taught. Here, the two of us pose for the cameras after one of her productions. It was late, and I was clearly ready to go home.
I started to play the piano at three. The little organ pictured here didn’t have enough keys in the bass, so after I learned “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” my parents found the money one day to rent a real piano. I began to play at recitals throughout the city. Here I am playing for the new teachers’ conference. I still don’t understand my mother’s decision to have me wear that fuzzy white hat.
I spent the first three years of my life living with my parents in a small apartment in the back of Westminster Presbyterian, my father’s church.
Mother and me, dressed in our swimsuits. I did not learn proper swimming techniques until I was twenty-five because Eugene “Bull” Connor closed Birmingham’s recreational facilities after the courts ordered him to integrate them.
Here I am eyeing Santa Claus suspiciously. A few years later when we went to see Saint Nick, a racial incident almost broke out when my father noticed that the Santa in question was treating black and white children differently. Daddy was prepared to “pull all that stuff off him and expose him as just another cracker.” Fortunately, Santa got the body language and treated me very well.
Mother filled our home with beautiful, well-preserved mahogany furniture. The sofa on which my mother and I are sitting resides in my home today.
Courtesy of Chris McNair.
I liked but didn’t love school. I got good grades despite a tendency toward procrastination. Clearly art (notice the string of Cs) was not my strong suit.
Here I am standing outside the White House during a family trip to D.C. My father said that I proclaimed, “I will work in there some day.” I don’t remember saying that, but my parents did have me convinced that even if I couldn’t have a hamburger at Woolworth’s lunch counter, I could grow up to be President of the United States.
Daddy established a kindergarten program at his church. Here, at a “graduation” ceremony for his students, he is handing a diploma to Denise McNair, one of the four little girls who were killed in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963.
Courtesy of Chris McNair
Daddy’s youth programs were renowned throughout the city. Here I am standing with members of Westminster’s children’s choir in the back row, second from the left.
It was in 1961 that Eugene “Bull” Connor decided to close Birmingham’s recreational facilities rather than integrate them. He received wide support from whites, like the author of this letter.
Eugene “Bull” Connor Papers, Birmingham, Alabama, Public Library Archives, Cat. #268.8.12.
Local civil rights leaders urged black customers to boycott white merchants who did not treat them equally. I was disappointed that we had to forgo our annual Christmas shopping but was old enough to understand the larger issues at stake.
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
While the civil rights movement is remembered for nonviolent civil disobedience, that was not always the case. A full-scale riot erupted on May 11, 1963, with black protesters setting fire to police cars and confronting an armored personnel carrier rumored to contain Bull Connor himself. My parents and I went to survey the damage that next morning.
Associated Press
My school was selected to participate in the city’s first integrated book fair at the Tutwiler Hotel. Here I am displaying my reading project. Mrs. Green, our teacher, was very proud to say that our presentations were far superior to the “shabby” ones of the white kids.
I took up figure skating while my parents pursued graduate work at the University of Denver. I was simply not very good. “It’s amazing you can do a jump,” one judge remarked. “You never actually leave the ice.”
The rigorous academics at St. Mary’s Academy prepared me well for college. Life also revolved around trying to attract the boys at our brother schools, Mullen Prep and Regis High. Plaid skirts, bobby socks, and saddle shoes were part of the uniform.