By early 2007, we were off to the races.
Having cast our lot with Obama, Tony Lake and I sped to assemble the best possible stable of foreign policy experts to assist the campaign. There was little competition, as it turned out. Clinton relied, initially, on the most senior advisors like former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger, and former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke. She had lots of bosses but few workhorses.
We took a different approach, targeting younger, thirty-, forty-, and fifty-somethings—experienced but not cabinet-level former officials—who would do the thinking and writing we needed, not just offer sage advice. My colleagues at the Brookings Institution were ripe for the picking, and many of them were our best early recruits. My dear friend Gayle Smith, who had also worked for President Clinton and was much closer to him than I was in his post-presidency, signed on with Obama at the outset, as did my former NSC colleagues Richard Clarke and Randy Beers, who were both then retired from government and brought unparalleled counterterrorism and homeland security experience. Some prospective additions needed convincing that Obama had a prayer of winning, but most were excited by his powerful personal narrative, oratorical skills, and compelling policy views.
Tony and I swiftly assembled a large team of energetic, experienced talent who were able to support Obama across all issue areas. We also led a steering group of about a dozen core supporters, several of whom Obama involved in speech preparation, drafting articles, debate prep, formulating key policy positions, and occasional conference calls. As the campaign matured, Obama built out his paid campaign staff, and colleagues like Ben Rhodes, Denis McDonough, and Obama Senate staffer Mark Lippert took on the day-to-day policy leadership, drawing upon our external team for expertise as needed.
My campaign appearances at house parties, fundraisers, public panels, rallies, churches, and get-out-the-vote (GOTV) events consumed a lot of travel time but were among my favorite activities. Over the course of the primary season, I journeyed from Iowa to New Hampshire, from South Carolina to Utah, New Mexico, South Dakota, Florida, Michigan, Georgia, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Indiana, often paired up with elected officials or celebrities, to talk to voters about why I believed Obama was the right person at the right time. Sometimes my pitch was generic; at other times I would speak in depth on his foreign policy credentials and positions.
The excitement on the hustings for Obama was palpable—from rural midwestern communities to big cities and suburbs, among people of all ages and races. Obama was tapping into a vein that was hungry for the kind of “hope and change” he represented.
One of my favorite trips was to New Hampshire in early January 2008, because I was joined by my ten-year-old son, Jake, who campaigned with me in the frigid, snow-covered southwestern corner of the state. From the bar in a modest hotel in Keene, New Hampshire, Jake and I watched television with friends as Obama was declared the winner in the hard-fought Iowa caucuses.
The victory was gratifying not only because it was the first contest of the primary season, but because, for Obama, everything depended on Iowa. Adjacent to his home state of Illinois, Iowa was the place where Obama bet the farm, gambling the bulk of his early money and field organization. It was no small feat for an African American to triumph in such a white state, where both his main opponents, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, had long histories and faithful followers.
Buoyed by the prospect that we could replicate the Iowa victory in New Hampshire, Jake and I spent several days knocking on doors in Keene where voters craved substantive discussion with campaign representatives. To maximize our efficiency, Jake and I sometimes split up and went to houses individually, since one knock could result in being invited into the owner’s living room for warmth from the deep snow, a hot beverage, sweets, and extended conversation.
Jake, who began his political journey as a lefty Dennis Kucinich supporter and has since migrated to the other extreme, was then a knowledgeable and persuasive Obama spokesman. At an Obama rally later in the week, I met charmed residents who gushed about how impressed they were with young Jake’s confident command of Obama’s policy positions and how polite and persuasive he was.
As the primary approached, I headlined events in Manchester, phone-banked, and served as a press surrogate in the pre- and post-debate spin room at Saint Anselm College. After days of rallies, debates, and GOTV activities, the primary outcome seemed uncertain. The Obama campaign remained hopeful, despite the negative impact of Obama’s dismissive comment in the debate that Hillary was “likable enough” and, thereafter, of Hillary fighting back tears while in conversation with women voters at a local diner. As I canvassed in Manchester on primary day, the mood didn’t feel great, and I worried that the night might end badly.
When the votes were counted, Obama indeed fell short. Even though I had hints of the outcome, the loss still felt like a breath-seizing blow. Obama’s concession speech was graceful and featured the introduction of his signature rallying cry, “Yes, we can!” That night, at the New Hampshire staff party, which ended like a wake, we all realized we were in for a long, tough primary battle.
Even then, I sensed the New Hampshire loss may have been a blessing in disguise. We had to be able to take a punch and correct course; and the campaign needed time to test and season our candidate. Had the road to the nomination been quick and easy, I believe Obama may not have been as well prepared to take on the Republican nominee.
After Clinton won the next contest in Nevada by 5 percentage points but split the delegates almost evenly with Obama, the campaign was essentially tied going into South Carolina, an important southern bellwether and indicator of how African American voters would choose between their long-standing affinity for the Clintons and the potential historic opportunity presented by Obama.
At my first stop in a rural black church near Greenville, I arrived to learn that Michelle Obama, the scheduled headliner, would not make it due to plane trouble. I was suddenly required to fill in as the main event, along with my former Clinton administration colleague, Ertharin Cousin, a Chicagoan with ties to the Obamas. I got up and mustered as much spirit and soul as I could to explain why I had picked Obama over Clinton. My rap probably sounded something like this: “Obama is about the future, our future. He is about change that we all can believe in. This choice is not about loyalty or passing the torch from one member of a dynasty to the other, however much we loved Bill Clinton. This is about the future and who has the ideas, the energy, the vision to understand your needs and make your lives better.”
For about a week, I traversed the far corners of South Carolina, my dad’s home state, where I had spent time over the years visiting my aunt Pansy, who had died just the year before. I went to university campuses and Democratic Party breakfasts, knocked on doors, and helped staff the statewide headquarters. The Clintons fought hard in South Carolina, knowing that a loss there would be costly and bode ill for their ability to galvanize the black vote.
Despite a race-tinged campaign, Obama won handily. The victory was especially sweet, given the bitterness of the fight, and set the battlefield for the rest of the contentious primary season. “All-in,” I remained devoted to helping Obama win the nomination, even though I realized that with each television appearance or super-delegate converted, I was digging my grave deeper with the Clinton machine. Yet this kind of dedication to mission, committing myself completely to what I believe in, came easily to me. It reflects who I am—indeed, who I grew into being at my demanding Washington, D.C., high school.
After Beauvoir, I attended the National Cathedral School for girls (NCS) from fourth grade until high school graduation, on the Washington Cathedral Close. Daily, as I greeted the ever-cheerful crossing guard while traversing Woodley Road, I looked up in awe at the immense, gray stone gothic Cathedral. Having attended services there since nursery school, I knew its massive flying buttresses, powerful tolling bells, meticulously carved gargoyles, and breathtaking stained glass windows—one containing a moon rock retrieved by the Apollo astronauts—with almost the same intimacy as my own home. To presidents and statesmen whose inaugural events and funerals are held there, the Washington Cathedral is the national house of worship. To me, it was my first church—its pulpit a familiar perch, its nave a path I regularly processed, its repertoire of hymns as much second nature as the Lord’s Prayer. On these hallowed grounds is where I was most challenged, learned invaluable lessons, made friends for life, and became who I am.
Mom and Dad didn’t agree on much, but they sent me off to NCS with a frequent refrain of my upbringing: “Always do your best, and your best will be good enough.” That meant they would not tolerate half-assed effort by me or Johnny, because we had all the skills we needed to excel. And if we truly tried, even if we failed, they would be proud of us—no matter the result. At the same time, they counseled us never to use race as an excuse or a crutch. Undoubtedly, my parents warned, we would face racial discrimination and must call out and fight bias wherever we encountered it. For many, they stressed, pernicious prejudice remains an enormous obstacle. Yet, Johnny and I were fortunate to have an excellent education and other rare opportunities; therefore, we would be wrong to blame race for our own failures or use race unfairly to our advantage. Our parents taught us, quite matter-of-factly, that we needed to be twice as good as the next (white) kid, because that is what it would take to be considered almost equal. At NCS, I came to understand exactly what they meant and held fast to that wisdom everywhere I went.
After a solid, if not exceptional, start, I kicked into high academic gear between eighth and ninth grade, once the worst of my parents’ divorce was behind me. In this period, I seriously considered leaving NCS for boarding school at someplace like St. Paul’s or Andover in New England. I had friends who loved these places and was excited by the prospect of a fresh start—an escape from the turbulence of my family life. My dad urged me to stay. His voice mattered, but it was another that ultimately swayed me. In the English Department office where we often talked after school, my public speaking and American literature teacher, Jim Tibbetts, was relentless. Using the nickname given me by my basketball teammates, which was short for “Sportin,” Mr. Tibbetts argued, “Spo, you are loved and will knock the lights out here at NCS. You have too much to contribute and too much to gain to leave. Don’t do it.”
In his late thirties, Mr. Tibbetts was jovial, heavyset, and frequently bearded, playing Santa Claus at Christmas and fitting the part. He became a mentor and a close friend whose door was always open, a kind and supportive male figure who was not a parent but understood me and what I was going through at home. The amount of time we spent together raised some eyebrows, but our friendship was one truly of respect, trust, and humor—lasting through college, graduate school, and well beyond.
Having taken Tibbetts’s advice, I stayed at NCS, benefiting enormously from excellent teachers and coaches who perceived my potential before I did.
Ruth Ann Williamson was a legend at NCS who had been teaching Medieval History for at least thirty years. Smart, demanding, and eccentric, Mrs. Williamson pushed us hard. One day at the end of seventh grade, she pulled me aside and said, “Susan, you are a talented young woman. If you apply yourself, and work for it, I believe you can win The Flag.” Her conviction that I could actually win the coveted American flag that flies adjacent to the National Cathedral—the prize given annually to the senior class valedictorian—was catalytic. Surprised that she thought I could do it, and even more startled that she bothered to tell me, I tucked the thought away until high school, when I resolved to do my true best.
History was my favorite subject, and John Wood, who taught eleventh-grade modern European history, helped cement my fascination and build my skills, readying me for the inimitable Anne Macdonald. “Annie Mac,” as we called her, taught AP U.S. history in twelfth grade. Her course was tough and riveting, requiring us to conduct primary research at the Library of Congress, where I prepared my thirty-page paper on poverty in Appalachia. Mrs. Macdonald wrote me the most generous letters of recommendation, warranting that I had rare talents as a scholar, leader, and potential politician. An old-school Republican, she may have been the first person to tell me I should be president of the United States.
Mrs. Macdonald’s words struck a chord with me, because at the age of ten, I had made up my mind that I wanted to become a U.S. senator.
I knew several senators and members of Congress; they were the parents of my friends, many of whom came from across the aisle. In that long-lost bipartisan environment in which I grew up, relationships were not constrained by politics but rather forged in compatibility and shared interests. Starting at Beauvoir, my classmates and I took field trips to Capitol Hill and toured the offices of members of both houses, including Senator Bill Brock (R-TN) and Representative Richard Ottinger (D-NY), the fathers of two of my closest early friends. I saw what senators did—make speeches, meet constituents, work on important issues. Politics was hot, and my hometown was hopping with the electricity of government.
Coming of age in D.C. in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was steeped in models of leadership and exemplars of public service.
Vividly, I recall watching Egyptian president Anwar Sadat wave triumphantly as he walked into the Egyptian embassy across the street from my mother’s house on Massachusetts Avenue. Secret Service snipers had requisitioned her roof. Sadat had just signed the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, ably negotiated by President Carter. It was a moment powerfully imbued with history, made more memorable by the fact that, just three years later, Sadat paid the ultimate price for daring to make peace with Israel, cut down in Cairo by assassins’ bullets.
Soon after began the torturous 444 days during which we, like all Americans, feared and prayed for our fifty-two hostages seized in the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Held by student revolutionaries backed by the extremist Iranian regime, these American hostages were public servants, mainly diplomats and military personnel, captured and tormented in the line of duty. On the January day in 1981 when they finally came home, cruelly released just after Carter left office, our nation rejoiced and honored the hostages with a huge parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. Yellow ribbons hung everywhere, and standing along the parade route I felt the enormous sense of collective relief.
Thereafter, I was swiftly reminded that the risks incurred by our country’s public servants are not limited to those stationed overseas, nor to rank-and-file officials. In March 1981, shortly after taking office, President Ronald Reagan was shot and nearly killed outside the Hilton Hotel, just blocks from my mother’s house, and we heard the sirens as they whisked him to George Washington University Hospital. Americans were shaken by such a brazen assassination attempt in our capital city. While I strongly disagreed with Reagan’s policies, he was our president and an honorable man who had nearly given his life in service to our country. To me, his sacrifice, that of those injured, and of the diplomats, development officers, military personnel, and intelligence officers who operate daily in harm’s way, was emblematic of the nobility of public service.
Within one city, I was exposed to consequential events from the local to the global that reinforced in me the importance of competent leadership, effective government, and wise public policy. The business of Washington was fascinating, and I wanted to be part of it.
My enthusiasm was tempered only by the realization that I lived in the one place on the American mainland that had zero U.S. senators. Washington, D.C., had no voting representation in Congress, and we still do not. As I argued passionately for the liberal side to my conservative colleagues at one of our weekly Government Club debates: “D.C.’s disenfranchisement is one of the major injustices of our political system. Over seven hundred thousand people pay full federal taxes. They can be conscripted into war but have no right to elect leaders whose votes count in Congress.” This purgatory appears all but permanent, given that change would require a constitutional amendment, and Republicans have long wished to deny heavily Democratic D.C. a full voice in Congress.
When I decided to become a U.S. senator one day, I knew all of that, so I was an early and strenuous advocate of D.C. voting rights, even as I considered adopting a home state in adulthood. My teenage plan was to run for the House of Representatives before eventually trying for the Senate. To me, both chambers were interesting and important, but back then the Senate seemed more stable, sober, and collaborative than the rough-and-tumble House. As I set out to learn as much as possible about Congress and public policy, my path after college seemed clear: go to law school, practice law, get established locally, and, at the right moment, run for Congress.
My first job in life was as a Democratic page in the U.S. House of Representatives. In the summer of 1979, having just completed ninth grade, at fourteen I was thrilled to earn $600 per month. My mom got me the position through a member of Congress she knew from her work on educational policy. Like many congressional jobs then, a House page was a patronage appointment, one doled out by members based on seniority. Even without a home state and an influential representative to importune, I, like several of my NCS and St. Albans peers, was able to get a summer job in Congress, because my mother had juice.
As pages, we all wore white shirts and blue pants, and our job was to deliver internal mail and packages between House offices. Given excessive freedom and independence, the only mortal sin we could commit was to throw our parcels into the regular mail. Democratic and Republican pages mingled and socialized, as many lived together at Thompson-Markward Hall, a dormitory on Capitol Hill. With a shared passion for politics, they came from all over the country, though very few were minorities. As a locally based page, I lived at home and rode the Metro to and from the Capitol.
Back then, there was virtually no adult supervision of this large summer posse of teens, aged fourteen to nineteen. In an era when young people partied hard and the drinking age in D.C. was eighteen, fellow pages smoked pot even in the garage of the Rayburn House Office Building. Weekend parties were routine, and I attended my share.
One Saturday night, I rode to a party in Virginia with a group of pages. The driver was Rebecca Moscone, a lovely, fun college freshman who six months earlier had lost her father, San Francisco mayor George Moscone, to assassination at City Hall. Living that summer at the home of Congressman John Burton, a friend of her father’s, Rebecca had borrowed his car.
We left the party before midnight, and none of us, including Rebecca, was significantly intoxicated. Merging onto the highway, suddenly we heard the screech of metal on metal and watched in horror as our car ground into the side of a fast-moving Exxon oil tanker. Only an extended sideswipe, our car was damaged, but we were all okay. Our biggest fear was the reaction of the famously explosive congressman to news that we had wrecked his car. When Rebecca reported the accident the next morning, with all due contrition, his response was abbreviated and pointed, “Aaaah, fuck it,” he said. Crisis averted.
Members of Congress were generally friendly and courteous to pages—joking, teasing, and telling us stories. Despite subsequent allegations of sexual misconduct by members with pages, I never saw or heard of anything untoward.
Still, as a fourteen-year-old page, I had my earliest and most jarring experience with sexual harassment. The twenty-two-year-old perpetrator worked as a doorman who controlled access to the House floor, a patronage job he landed courtesy of a family member. As I passed through his door, he would make flirtatious, sometimes outrageous comments. I would generally ignore him and keep walking into the House chamber. Then, one day after work, when I was waiting on the Metro platform at the Capitol South station, he approached me. Getting extremely close, he told me how he planned to do unprintable things to me with his tongue. Shocked and scared, I told him forcefully to leave me alone. He did not bother me again, but to this day I cannot forget how demeaning and disgusting he was.
Unfortunately, I have seen him multiple times since, though I always keep my distance. Now an elected official, he would likely deny any wrongdoing and may not even remember his offensive actions, but I pray he has never again sexually harassed or assaulted anyone. As jarring as his abusive behavior was, I am lucky. After I demanded he stop, he relented, and the experience did not scar me in any lasting way. Fortunately, in all my subsequent years of working in male-dominated environs, I never experienced other disturbing instances of sexual harassment beyond crude jokes, loose hands, and obnoxious comments, which I managed to parry or deflect.
Despite that doorman, I returned to Capitol Hill for each of the next three summers, taking on increasingly challenging assignments that deepened my knowledge of policy and the legislative process. It was my privilege to be sponsored by the wise and kind Representative Augustus “Gus” Hawkins (D-CA), one of the most senior African American members and chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. Bald, compact, gentle, and soft-spoken, Mr. Hawkins quietly but effectively championed civil rights, employment and training, and education legislation, while serving as a model of civility. He was the outstanding member who served tirelessly for the greater good, not personal advancement.
My admiration for Mr. Hawkins, combined with those four summers on Capitol Hill, fueled my drive to serve in Congress, even as I became increasingly aware of its shortcomings. Legislative stagnation and many members’ unabashed egotism injected a measure of realism into my idealized view of Congress—and this at a time when the House and Senate functioned comparatively well, and bipartisan cooperation was not an oxymoron!
Summers exposed me to policy and politics, with the former becoming my calling, but as soon as September came, I dove back into the usual stuff of high school—academics, sports, extracurricular activities, and my social life.
Through varsity tennis and basketball, I learned how to be a team player, play to win, and eventually lose with grace (which I did frequently as a mediocre point guard). My first high school basketball coach had a profound impact on me. A hard-ass—raw, rough-edged, and barely out of college—she was the opposite of our typically refined teachers. Coming from a big, Catholic, working-class family in New Jersey, she had little patience for the pretentious, coddled girls at NCS, whom she ribbed mercilessly as soft little rich kids. To toughen us up, she kicked our butts, making us run more full-court suicides than any of us could endure.
Coach also took our team to a new level of play and cohesion, giving us each detailed individual feedback. She advised me to play with more confidence on offense—using my legs and putting more arc and backspin on my shot, concentrating on the square above the basket when executing driving lay-ups, and honing my ball-handling skills. We learned how to push ourselves and play real ball, not the effete game that many of her contemporaries favored. We all loved our coach, and she came to love us back.
So I was surprised one day at practice when in conversation with the team on the sidelines of the gym, for no apparent reason and without rancor, she looked me in the eyes and called me “Nigger.”
Reflexively and immediately, I replied, “Fuck you.”
That was the end of that conversation. My teammates were stunned into silence.
I was shocked but not hurt. We both moved on. While I’ve never forgotten her epithet, I never blamed her for it. And she never blamed me for responding in kind. I understood that the N-word was likely one she heard growing up. It came out involuntarily and not maliciously, but I also knew it could not go unanswered. Cussing out a teacher was something I have not done before or since.
Unfortunately, she stayed at NCS only for my freshman and sophomore years before leaving to marry and coach at the college level. Basketball was never as fun without her, but she kept in touch, following our team’s progress and writing letters to me and other students long after she was gone. In them, she offered me thoughtful tips about setting personal goals in basketball, not letting myself get wrapped up in other people’s expectations, whether athletic or academic, and insisted that I “be Susan Rice always.”
Some thirty-five years later, during the 2012 Benghazi drama when I was regularly reviled on cable television, Coach sent me another handwritten letter, in which she apologized for ever hurting me, thanked me for my service to our country, and said she was inspired by me and would keep praying for me. I cherish that letter and keep it close.
Sports taught me to be fearless—even to use my body as a weapon. While enduring the frustration of sitting on the bench, I reveled in the success of my teammates. Playing point guard taught me how to lead a team in which everyone adds value, and my optimal contribution is not as an individual but is in eliciting the best performance from all the players in unison. Undoubtedly my approach to leadership in the years to come was forged not only in academia but also on the court.
Off the court, I devoted much of my energy to student leadership. As president of the school government in my senior year, I developed early political skills—public speaking, persuasion, and constituent service. My responsibilities also included helping the headmaster and senior faculty manage disciplinary cases and revise and enforce the honor code. I found the added stress of these adult obligations to be considerable—especially in combination with a rigorous course load and sports. While I relished serving my fellow students and being trusted by the faculty, I couldn’t be serious all the time.
Like most teenagers, I found refuge in good friends and was closest to a trio of girls who later were my bridesmaids and remain besties. Laura Richards is kind, soft-spoken, sympathetic, and blessed with both intelligence and unusual common sense. Trinka Roeckelein is a high-octane, beautiful, and sensitive artist with multiple creative talents. With Andrea Worden, an excellent student and athlete (and far better basketball player than I was), I shared family difficulties, plus an enduring interest in China and human rights issues.
Over the years, I have stayed close to several other cherished NCS classmates, including Hutchey Brock, my first close Republican friend. The Brock family lived near the house my mother rented after the separation. When I was angry, sad, or needed a respite, I ran to Hutchey’s house where I always found a welcoming safe haven. Their gentle Tennessee warmth and cohesive, loving family were a powerful antidote to the wreckage of my parents’ marriage and a proximate example of a healthy home.
Given the racial composition of my school—there were about six black girls in my class of sixty-three students—most of my NCS friends were white. My social circle outside of school was little more diverse, because our parents insisted that, just as we would not join white elite dance societies or country clubs (even if we could), the Rices would not retreat within the walls of exclusively black kids’ clubs. That applied especially to the D.C. chapter of Jack and Jill, a selective national social club for black children, which our parents refused to allow us to attend. When one of us questioned this edict, my parents’ response was: “We may be relatively well-off blacks, but are not going to be ‘bougie,’ self-important, social-climbing Negroes.”
At NCS, I never felt that race infused or affected my relationships with my white friends. My classmates knew and respected me for who I was, including the fact that I was African American, and they did not treat me differently than others. Not so all their parents, many of whom were quietly unreconstructed southern conservatives who belonged to segregated country clubs. (I emphatically exclude the Brocks from this category.)
At our Episcopal school, there were also few non-Christians, only a smattering of foreign students, and a small but robust cadre of Jewish girls. These friends generously invited me to Passover seders and to synagogue for special occasions, teaching me to love the decency and moral clarity of Judaism, particularly the socially conscious tradition of Tikkun Olam—repairing the world.
These insights came in handy when, at fourteen, I traveled with my dad and brother on a TWA Board of Directors’ trip to Egypt and Israel. It was late March 1979. We arrived just as the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty was signed in Washington and six months after the Camp David Accords. In Egypt, we cruised down the Nile River Valley from Luxor to Aswan, exploring the major tombs and historic sites. In Cairo, we visited the Antiquities Museum and the Great Pyramids at Giza.
From Egypt we flew to Israel on the first-ever direct flight between the two countries. We stayed at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and visited the Old City, Temple Mount, and the Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem. Traveling east to Jericho and south to climb Masada, we floated in the Dead Sea and visited a working kibbutz. I loved Israel, with its energy, bustle, and idealism, and I felt later on, as a diplomat, that I was returning to a familiar place. In that fleeting moment in 1979, in contrast to my many later visits, Israel seemed like one of the most hopeful places on earth.
My own religious education came almost entirely from school, not home. While Dad had firmly rejected organized religion, Mom held on to her Episcopal faith mostly for purposes of weddings and funerals. From Beauvoir through graduation, I was steeped in the Episcopal Church, attending Friday services in the Cathedral and an additional chapel service during the week. Our parents left religion entirely to our own choice. While I was baptized Episcopalian as a baby, Johnny was not baptized at all. My mother confessed she felt badly about having left Johnny hanging but not enough that she rectified it. The Reverend John T. Walker, bishop of Washington through most of my time on the Cathedral Close, was a brilliant, socially committed, progressive African American leader, who helped draw me to the Episcopal Church. My faith deepened as I progressed in school such that, in eleventh grade, I decided to be confirmed.
Despite my confirmation, I can lay no claim to being a dutiful child of the cloth. Throughout high school, I continued to travel in the social crowd, seeking fun and a release from the pressures of family, school, and the wider world. Our partying became more frequent, and my friends and I became increasingly adept at hiding our escapades, even as we drank plenty of alcohol, smoked pot occasionally, and worse, drove intoxicated. Once, after our last exam of senior year, a large group of us celebrated by going drinking. After roaming the neighborhood, we returned to school where, overcome by nausea, I surreptitiously puked my guts out. Unable to make my own way, my friend Laura (who had not been drinking) drove me home in the late afternoon and deposited me in bed before Dad could discover what was up. I was never caught by my parents or teachers, nor do I think they even suspected me of wrongdoing.
Conscious at the time that I was living one step from catastrophe, I took risks in high school that back then seemed manageable, if slightly foolish. In retrospect, through the eyes of a mature adult and parent, I am struck by my own irresponsibility. Much as I still love a good throw-down and have used dance parties to break diplomatic ice, I look back on my teenage recklessness with due remorse.
This Washington, D.C., private school social life later became infamous during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Though I never met Kavanaugh in high school, he was my contemporary, and we have friends in common. Watching the testimony was traumatic, bringing back uncomfortable memories of this dangerous period filled with “BEER,” unauthorized parties, and sex. Neither I nor (to my knowledge) any of my good friends experienced sexual assault in high school, but we easily could have been assailed by drunken boys in much the same way as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford recounted, or worse. But for the grace of God…
In a separate matter, I deliberately lagged the crowd. Several friends chose to lose their virginity before graduation; I did not. Though I had high school boyfriends, I took my mother’s wisdom to heart without argument or question. “Susan,” she would say, “always treat your body as a temple. There is nothing more important than your self-esteem, and the quickest way to ruin it is to have cheap sex with someone you don’t really care for.” Her message was especially powerful, because she made sure I knew that she always had my back. “Please use birth control, but if something ever goes wrong, I’m here for you and you must come to me.” That was her mantra, and I heeded it.
In our highly competitive small school, college admissions were substantially a zero-sum game. Only two or three girls could expect acceptance to Harvard or Yale, which for many parents was the gold standard. Against this backdrop, I sensed that some parents of my classmates had suggested to their daughters, that because I was black, I would likely do well—better than I should—in the college admissions process. Their assumption that I would benefit from affirmative action, rather than succeed on the merits, stung and underscored these parents’ fundamental belief that I was less worthy than their daughters.
Touring colleges, I was drawn to Yale’s intellectual and social climate and decided to apply there “early action,” which would enable me to learn of their decision before Christmas but not have to commit until the regular admissions process played out in late April.
Pleased and relieved to receive an acceptance letter from Yale over the Christmas holiday, I decided also to apply to Stanford. Mom had taken me and Johnny to visit Stanford years earlier, and I recalled fondly the great weather, beautiful campus, and the whacky marching band whose albums I was given as a child by Fred Hargadon, the legendary dean of Stanford admissions. My mother did not share my attraction to Stanford, which she dismissed as too far from home and inferior to Harvard, her own alma mater. Indeed, in the early 1980s, except in California, Stanford was not yet widely viewed as being quite as good as the best Ivy League schools. Mom insisted that, if I were to apply to any more schools, I must also try at Harvard.
In mid-April, I faced what is fairly called a “high-class dilemma.” To help me decide, I visited Stanford again for the first time in years. I loved it—the sun, the fun, the easygoing attitude but serious academics—and didn’t care that it was not an Ivy League or far from home.
On the way back, my plane got diverted to Nebraska because of an April snowstorm in the East. I had to spend the night on the frigid floor of the Omaha airport, while I wondered all night—How am I going to forgive myself if I choose to go to New England and freeze my ass off from November through April? It also seemed like time for a break from the East Coast preppiness and pressure I had lived with all my life—a chance for fresh perspective and less stress.
Mom, however, was dead-set against what she and Alfred derisively called “Leland Stanford Junior University.” The heat was mounting from her, and it wasn’t pleasant. Dad was cool either way and could see the merits of Stanford, given his love of Berkeley.
Yale wisely gave me space to decide, but not Harvard. I kept receiving increasingly harassing calls from the local alumni interviewer of prospective applicants. He had recruited me for Harvard and, apparently, it was his responsibility to land this fish. In our last call, after hearing me explain that I was seriously considering Stanford, he reiterated how superior Harvard was. Finding me unmoved, he shouted into the phone, “How can you not go to Harvard??!!”
Amazed, my response was brief and sharp: “Watch me.” I then held my tongue, though I really wanted to add—How? Because of arrogant assholes like you. Instead, I packed up and moved to my godmother Peggy’s house for the duration of the college decision period, both to escape my mom and Mr. Harvard.
The day our decisions were due coincided with the annual joint National Cathedral School–St. Albans Cum Laude Cathedral Service, when the top students in both schools are inducted into the honor society. That morning, in the shower, I decided to go to Stanford. It felt right, and I was sure of my choice. At the start of the processional at the Cathedral, I spotted my college guidance counselor and gave her the news, asking her to stay mum, since I hadn’t yet told my parents.
After the service ended, I approached my mother and Alfred, who were sitting in the front of the Cathedral, with Dad nearby. Calmly, I said, “Mom, I’ve thought this through, and I’ve decided to go to Stanford.”
My mother’s face registered shock as she looked up at the immense stained glass window in the front of the nave and burst audibly and sloppily into tears, which both appalled and embarrassed me. Alfred comforted her. My dad congratulated me and moved on to dissociate himself from this insanity. To compound the trauma, the Harvard-educated father of a Harvard-bound classmate hugged my mother, consoling her with the words, “Oh Lois, I am so sorry.” As if her daughter had died. I walked away in disgust. Mom remained inconsolable.
Only years later did she concede the wisdom of my decision.
My senior year at NCS ended on an early June weekend devoted to Flag Day, the honors ceremony, and graduation. Rain had forced the traditional Flag Day ceremony from the beautiful grassy lawn into the cavernous Cathedral. All the graduating seniors assembled in the crossing of the Cathedral wearing long white dresses, each carrying a dozen red roses. My parents sat somewhere in the nave, proud and satisfied that I had done my best—with or without any final honors. As I prepared to leave the Cathedral Close after fourteen years of intense and powerful education, I felt both exhausted and fulfilled, yet confident I had developed the skills and the character to weather whatever might come next.
At Flag Day, I expected to win a couple of awards, maybe for history and for citizenship, but not The Flag. As the ceremony wound down, I had garnered some five awards, well exceeding my expectations. So, with little stress, I awaited the announcement of the last award, The Flag. I was surprised to hear “Susan Elizabeth Rice” announced as the winner, along with my classmate, Catherine Toulmin, whom I was betting would win it solo. It would not have occurred to me to aim quietly for The Flag, if not for Mrs. Williamson’s direct challenge in seventh grade.
That victory was sweet, especially because I imagined it would shut down the parents of some of my white classmates who were telling their daughters that I had gotten into the best colleges mainly because I was black. Their ease at dismissing my capabilities infuriated me and also engendered some dichotomous feelings about affirmative action. Now, it was clear: I may be black; but objectively by their standards, I was also the best. They had to deal with that.
My father’s daughter, I decided to let race be their problem, not mine.