Emmett J. Rice

Emmett John Rice (December 21, 1919 – March 10, 2011) was a governor of the Federal Reserve System, a Cornell University economics professor, an expert in the monetary systems of developing countries, and the father of President Barack Obama's National Security Advisor, Susan E. Rice.

Rice was African American. He was born in Florence, South Carolina, and was the son of Sue Pearl (née Suber) and the Rev. Ulysses Simpson Rice (1875-1927). His father died when he was 7. He attended segregated schools before his family moved to New York City when he was 16. Rice studied at the City College of New York, receiving a B.B.A. in 1941 and an M.B.A. in 1942 at City College of New York. He then joined the US Army Air Force in World War II, serving with the Tuskegee Airmen. After the war, he earned a PhD in economics at the University of California, Berkeley and was a Fulbright scholar in India. Rice integrated the Berkeley Fire Department as a student by becoming its first African-American fireman. He next taught economics at Cornell as the university's only black assistant professor. He later served as a governor of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1986.

Rice was a research assistant in economics at Berkeley from 1950 to 1951 and was then a teaching assistant in economics in 1953 and 1954. In between, he spent 1952 as a research associate at the Reserve Bank of India as a Fulbright Fellow.

From 1954 to 1960, Rice was an assistant professor of economics at Cornell University. From 1960 to 1962, he took leave from Cornell to work as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and he then went on to be an adviser to the Central Bank of Nigeria in Lagos in 1963 and 1964.

From 1964 to 1966, Rice was Deputy Director, then Acting Director, of the Treasury Department's Office of Developing Nations. From 1966 to 1970, he was U.S. Alternate Executive Director for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), the International Development Association, and the International Finance Corporation.

In 1970, Rice took leave from the U.S. Treasury department to be executive director of the Mayor's Economic Development Committee for Washington, D.C.. In 1972 he left public service to assume the position of senior vice president of the National Bank of Washington.

Rice was appointed to the Federal Reserve Board in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter. He was the second black member, after Andrew Brimmer, who was appointed in 1966. Rice served on the Board for seven years under Chairman Paul A. Volcker.

After leaving the Federal Reserve in 1986, Rice served on corporate boards and consulted.

Rice died of congestive heart failure on March 10, 2011 at his home in Camas, Washington at the age of 91.