Colin Powell

CTL-E-5437 · Person · politician · 1980s–2020s

VERIFIED evidence grade of this record

Colin Luther Powell (born April 5, 1937, in Harlem, New York, to Jamaican immigrant parents) rose through the United States Army from a City College ROTC commission to four-star general and the summit of American military and diplomatic office. He served two tours in Vietnam, then climbed the national-security ladder: National Security Advisor to President Reagan from 1987 to 1989 — the first Black American in that post — and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993, the first Black officer and the youngest person to hold the military's highest office, presiding over the Panama invasion and the Gulf War. On January 20, 2001 — the date the intake timeline files for him — Powell was sworn in as Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, the first Black American to hold that office, serving through the September 11 attacks and the opening of the Iraq War, whose case he presented to the United Nations in February 2003 and later called a lasting blot on his record. He died on October 18, 2021. The audit found no trace of him in the graph; this record corrects the absence.

The record

• Also known as: Colin Luther Powell

Notes

Statistics: Secretary of State: sworn January 20, 2001 (U.S. Department of State). The intake paste's stop #40 (2001) is VERIFIED. Tribute care applies. Classification note: Powell is filed as Person/politician on the strength of his cabinet office; his military career is carried in the description, the schema offering no service subtype. · Curator's Judgment: DRAFT — for founder review (TRIBUTE): Powell's life was the integration of the American command structure, one 'first' at a time — and his record here states the Iraq presentation alongside the summits, because a citation graph that keeps only the triumphs is a brochure. The flowers and the footnote travel together, as they should for any honest life. · Photo slot: CLEARED CANDIDATE — Wikimedia Commons File:Colin Powell official Secretary of State photo.jpg, Public domain (U.S. Department of State), license verified from Commons API metadata on 2026-10-15; not downloaded — visual pass follows merge per standing pattern.

Sources

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'Colin Powell' — supports: birth April 5, 1937, Harlem; the National Security Advisor and Joint Chiefs chairmanships as firsts; death October 18, 2021
• U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, 'Colin Luther Powell' — supports: his swearing-in as Secretary of State on January 20, 2001, and his tenure's principal events (primary source)
• Joint History Office / standard references — supports: his chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs (1989–1993) as the first Black officer in the post

Record CTL-E-5437 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: VERIFIED · 3 sources (1 primary) · CTL research: BCI-001.
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