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Dr. Condoleezza Rice's Childhood Memories of the Civil Rights Movement

Season 4
Aired on 01/04/2015 | CC tv-14
As a child growing up in racially charged Birmingham, Alabama, Dr. Condoleezza Rice says she rarely interacted with white people. "All of those images that are now pretty far back in our nation's historical memory were very much the memories that shaped who I am," she says. "Birmingham was the most segregated big city in America."

In 1962 and 1963, Birmingham became the epicenter of America's Civil Rights Movement. "It was a place that really did invoke a lot of fear—night riders and Klu Klux Klan and all of those images," she says. "Birmingham was beginning to be known as 'bombing-ham' because there were so many unsolved bombings, including one in our neighborhood."

In the above video, Dr. Rice opens up about her connection to the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, which killed four little black girls.

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