POWELL, COLIN

born April 5, 1937, New York, N.Y., U.S. Colin Powell. in full Colin Luther Powell chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-93), the first black officer to hold the highest military post in the United States. The son of Jamaican immigrants, Powell grew up in the Harlem and South Bronx sections of New York City and graduated from the City College of New York (B.S., 1958), serving in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). Entering the army, he served in Vietnam in 1962-63 and 1968-69 and then studied at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. In 1972 he took his first political position, as a White House fellow, and soon became an assistant to Frank Carlucci, then deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He then held various postings over the years, in the Pentagon and elsewhere, and in 1983 became Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger's senior military assistant. In 1987 he joined the staff of the National Security Council as deputy to Carlucci, then assistant to the president for national-security affairs. Late in 1987 President Ronald Reagan appointed Powell to succeed Carlucci. Early in 1989 Powell took over the Army Forces Command. In April 1989 Powell became a four-star general, and in August President George Bush nominated him chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As chairman, he played a leading role in planning the invasion of Panama (1989) and the Desert Shield and Desert Storm operations of the Persian Gulf crisis and war (August 1990-March 1991). He retired from the military in 1993.