Condoleezza Rice: The First African-American Woman

The term, “glass ceiling”, first introduced in the 1980’s, is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as "an unfair system or set of attitudes that prevents some people (such as women or people of a certain race) from getting the most powerful jobs; an intangible barrier within a hierarchy that prevents women or minorities from obtaining upper-level positions.” The proverbial glass ceiling remained the one thing that kept women just below the surface of leadership in nearly every realm of business and politics until women began to crack the ceiling and finally shattered it in the late twentieth century.
Among these strong-willed, highly educated and powerful women is Condoleezza Rice, the first woman and first African-American to serve as provost of Stanford University, the first female National Security Advisor (2001-2005) and the first African-American woman to serve a United States Secretary of State …show more content…
She attended a school in Jim Crow, Alabama, during a time of violence, racism and segregation in the United States. In 1963, she lost one of her kindergarten classmates in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The experience is one she recalls as one of her saddest memories.
She was a witness to the beginning of the civil rights movement which she refers to as the “second founding of the America.” As a young child, she and her family were right in the middle of the most volatile area of Birmingham and lived just a few blocks from the jail where Martin Luther King was held in 1963, after being arrested in the park. However, despite everything, her parents instilled in her, the belief that she was capable of anything and provided her with a strong set of morals and principles that would guide her on her way to becoming one of the most powerful women in the