The first Black U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell died on October 18, 2021 at the age of 84. Despite being fully vaccinated against COVID-19, he died due to complication from the disease.
- Gen. Powell, who was wounded in Vietnam, served as U.S. National Security Adviser under President Ronald Reagan from 1987 to 1989.
- He joined President George W. Bush’s administration in 2001 as secretary of state, the first Black person to represent the U.S. government on the world stage.
- Powel’s tenure, however, was marred by his 2003 address to the United Nations Security Council in which he cited faulty information to claim that Saddam Hussein had secretly stashed weapons of mass destruction. Such weapons never materialized, and though the Iraqi leader was removed, the war devolved into years of military and humanitarian losses.
- As a four-star Army General, he was Chairman of the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush during the 1991 Gulf War in which U.S.-led forces expelled Iraqi troops from neighbouring Kuwait.
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