Colin Powell: a career marked by Faustian bargains in service of war | Cynthia A Young

Unlike many Black military men before him, Powell behaved just as the white leaders had: waging war when and where he was told to do so

I cannot think of Colin Powell without thinking of my own father, who, like Powell, served in the US military. My dad was only a generation older than Powell, but that gap was the difference between serving in a segregated or integrated military. A second world war veteran, my midwestern father was stationed at a southern military base in a segregated marine corps.

In those days, a Black man could be demoted for failing to show proper deference" to white officers, a fate that befell my father, who I never saw defer to anyone. My father never spoke of his time in the military, seemingly indifferent to it, not ashamed exactly, but not proud either. I suspect that he, like many Jim Crow era Black men, enlisted because of the GI Bill, which paid for college and then law school, degrees that would have otherwise been out of reach for my father.