Colin Powell Born: From Harlem to the Pentagon

Colin Powell was born in Harlem on April 5, 1937, to Jamaican immigrant parents who worked in the garment district. He grew up in the South Bronx and joined ROTC at the City College of New York partly because he liked the uniforms and the sense of structure. He graduated in 1958 and spent the next 35 years in the United States Army, rising through the ranks with a combination of intelligence, political skill, and genuine military competence. He served two tours in Vietnam, was wounded, and returned to a peacetime army that was rebuilding after the war. His rise was steady: military assistant to the Secretary of Defense, national security advisor to President Reagan, and then, in 1989, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking military officer in the country. He was the first African American to hold the position. He oversaw the 1991 Gulf War, which was planned and executed with a doctrine of overwhelming force that bore his name: the Powell Doctrine. The success of the Gulf War made him one of the most popular public figures in America, and both parties urged him to run for president. He declined. In 2001, George W. Bush appointed him Secretary of State. On February 5, 2003, Powell sat before the United Nations Security Council and presented evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The evidence turned out to be wrong. The intelligence was flawed, some of it fabricated by unreliable sources, and the invasion that followed became the most controversial American military action since Vietnam. Powell called the presentation a "blot" on his record and the worst moment of his career. He had privately argued against the invasion. He died on October 18, 2021, at age 84, of complications from COVID-19.