Secretary of State Colin Luther Powell served as national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan, and under President George Bush became the first African American to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-1993). In 2001 he was confirmed as the Secretary of State by the U.S. Senate.
Colin Luther Powell was born in Harlem, New York City on April 5, 1937, the son of a shipping clerk and a seamstress, both of whom were immigrants from Jamaica. Powell spent most of his childhood in the South Bronx, then regarded as a step up from Harlem. Despite the urgings of his parents that he should "strive for a good education" in order to "make something" of his life, Powell remained an ordinary student throughout high school. At City College of New York, Powell discovered himself; his retentive mind and leadership abilities made him a conspicuous success in the Army's Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). He graduated from the program in 1958 with the rank of cadet colonel, the highest awarded, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He was then assigned to duty in West Germany. In 1962, while stationed at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, Powell met and married Alma Vivian Johnson. The couple had three children. Powell's next overseas assignment was in South Vietnam, where he was wounded in action. He then studied at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, finishing second in a class of more than twelve hundred officers. During a second tour in Vietnam he received the Soldier's Medal for pulling several men from a burning helicopter. The army then provided Powell the time to study for a Master's degree in business administration at George Washington University. He received the degree in 1971, after which he worked as an analyst at the Pentagon before securing what he called a "dream job": an appointment as a prestigious White House fellow in the Office of Management and Budget under the director, Caspar Weinberger, and his deputy, Frank Carlucci, two men of rising influence in Washington who perceived Powell's uncommon abilities and who would help shape his career. A man of commanding presence at six feet one inch and 200 pounds, Powell was assigned to South Korea in 1973 to command a battalion troubled by racial animosities. "I threw the bums out of the army and put the drug users in jail," he recalled.