A self-described C student from the Bronx rose to America's top soldier
Colin Powell, son of Jamaican immigrants, picked up Yiddish working in a Bronx baby furniture shop and admitted to a C average in geology at City College. He went on to chair the Joint Chiefs of Staff and became the first Black American to serve as secretary of state.
Powell was born in Harlem on April 5, 1937, to Maud, a seamstress, and Luther, a shipping clerk, both from Jamaica. He grew up in the South Bronx, graduated from Morris High School in 1954 and, as a teenager, helped Orthodox Jewish families with tasks forbidden to them on the Sabbath. While studying at City College he signed up for officer training through ROTC and was commissioned a second lieutenant on graduating in 1958.
He spent 35 years in uniform, rising to four-star general and leading U.S. Army Forces Command in 1989. He served as national security advisor from 1987 to 1989, then as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 1989 to September 1993, handling 28 crises including the 1989 invasion of Panama and the 1990 to 1991 Gulf War. From that period came the Powell Doctrine, which holds that American forces should be committed only when vital national interests are at stake, overwhelming force is available and the public broadly supports action.
Appointed secretary of state by George W. Bush, he held the post from 2001 to 2005. His presentation to the United Nations Security Council making the case for war in Iraq later haunted him; he acknowledged it contained substantial inaccuracies. He stepped down after Bush's 2004 re-election. Politically independent for most of his career, he joined the Republican Party in 1995 and left it in 2021 after the attack on the Capitol on January 6.
Out of office he wrote the memoirs My American Journey and It Worked for Me, chaired the youth charity America's Promise and spoke widely. Although not a candidate, he received three electoral votes from faithless electors in Washington State in 2016. His honours ranged from the Purple Heart to two Presidential Medals of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. He died on October 18, 2021, of complications from COVID-19 while being treated for a blood cancer that weakened his immunity.
Source: Colin Powell
