Throughout the early 1900s, women fought for the same rights that men had. These rights included, the ability to keep the money that they earned, equal custody of their children, the ability to get out of abusive relationships, and the right to vote, which was granted in the Nineteenth Amendment. Women saw this amendment as a great achievement for women’s rights. Eventually, women could hold political offices. Some of the best American politicians that have ever lived were women. One of these influential women is Condoleezza Rice, who would come to be the first African-American woman to become Secretary of State. Although she grew up being treated as an inferior because of her race, she became one of the most famous and influential female politicians. …show more content…
Her father, John Wesley Rice Jr., was an ordained minister in the Birmingham Westminster Presbyterian Church. He also was a football coach and guidance counselor at one of Birmingham’s public black schools. Condoleezza’s mother, Angelena, was a teacher and a church organist. Angelena loved opera and named Condoleezza after an Italian term, con dolcezza, meaning “to play with sweetness”. Inspired by her mother, Condoleezza began playing piano at the age of three and would later be considered a childhood prodigy for her musical abilities. In school, Condoleezza had exceptionally good grades and skipped the first and seventh grades. Due to the segregation at the time, Condoleezza attended African-American schools in Alabama. She also experienced the racism that was very prevalent in the South. During the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s, a firebombing killed four young African-American girls during Sunday School. Condoleezza Rice knew two of them. In 1965, the Rice family, with 11-year-old Condoleezza, moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. When she was in tenth grade, her family moved to Denver, Colorado, where she attended her first integrated