Susan Rice has Jamaican roots too
THE EDITOR, Madam:
IHAVE received feedback on my article in the Sunday Gleaner about Kamala Harris – the woman of Jamaican background. Very few of us, however, knew much about the other African American woman who was widely rumoured to be Harris’ main competitor for the position: Ambassador Susan Rice. She, too, has Jamaican roots as her grandparents left Jamaica early in the 1900s to make a living in the United States.
In a speech at Howard University’s 145th Convocation, Rice said: “With little formal education, my grandfather, David, took the best job he could get – as a janitor. My grandmother was a maid and a seamstress. But my grandparents managed to scrape and save to send all five of their children to college – four sons to Bowdoin and my mom, Lois, to Harvard-Radcliffe, where she was student government president. I am here today because of these profoundly American stories of struggle and success. I wish my grandfather could have imagined, as he bent over his broom, that his granddaughter would someday serve in the Cabinet of the first African American president of the United States.”
Susan’s mother, Lois Rice, became an American corporate executive, scholar, and educationpolicy expert. She is widely known as “mother of the Pell Grant” – a subsidy the Federal Government provides for needy undergraduate students. The Wall Street Journal said she was “among the first wave of African American women to serve on boards of major US corporations”. Lois married Emmett Rice, a Tuskegee Airman and Fulbright scholar who later earned his PhD in economics at UC Berkeley, where Kamala’s father also gained his.
He became Cornell University’s only black assistant professor before becoming governor of the Federal Reserve System and an expert in the monetary systems of developing countries.
ACCOLADES
Susan Rice is their only child, born just over three weeks after Kamala. Rice attended Stanford University before becoming a Rhodes Scholar and completing her doctorate at Oxford. At 32, she became the youngest person in US history to serve as assistant secretary of state. She became the 27th United States ambassador to the United Nations and the 24th national security adviser. She has been the recipient of numerous honours and awards both nationally and internationally.
In these stories, the most important lesson for parents could be the immense rewards of persistent struggle, sacrifice, and commitment.