Powell has also not been at all reticent about spreading his own message for success to others. When he was still Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon in 1992, he returned to Morris High School in the South Bronx, where he was once a student, and told the students to get their high school diplomas as a minimum to achieving anything in life: "Without it, you are on your way to nowhere" (Hughes 11). Powell has continued delivering this and related messages since he retired to private life--private in that he is no longer part of the government, but public in that he remains in the public eye and uses this fact to promote worthy causes to benefit the poor and to advance education among young people.

As noted, colin Powell was the son of jamaican immigrants and was raised in the Bronx. He was a graduate of the City College of New York and not West Point, as would have been the normal route for one who would rise so high in the military establishment. Powell served two combat tours in Vietnam and advanced in rank. In 1987, he accepted Ronald Reagan's appointment of him as national security adviser, at which time newspaper columnist Carl Rowan wrote,

To understand the significance of Powell's elevation to this extremely difficult and demanding post, you must realize that only a generation ago it was an unwritten rule that i

Powell returned and moved to Columbus, Georgia with his wife and child. He was not accustomed to the sort of racial prejudice he encountered in the South, though his wife was. he was a student once more at Fort Benning between August 1964 and May 1965 in the Infantry Advanced Course, after which he was assigned another year as a test officer for the Supporting Weapons Division. He was now an instructor of the men coming out of Officer Candidate School (Hughes 83-85).

Today . . . the neighborhood is about three percent Caucasian, seventy-five percent Hispanic, and the rest African-American. But the percentages tell only a minor part of the story, As Hunts Point changed complexion, its economic base crumbled, and with that came a catalogue of nearly every ill that can befall an urban area, nearly all of them magnified to the breaking point (Means 32).

Newhouse, John. War and Peace in the Nuclear Age. New York: Vintage books, 1988.

Harbrecht, Douglas, Amy Borrus, Bill Janetski. "Managing the War." Business Week (February 4, 1991), 34-37.

Powell says that his family had a subtle "joke" that was ongoing and that had his father as management and his mother as labor because of their respective jobs. Powell says his parents were hard-working people and religious people, and a friend of the family stated, "they made sure Colin got his religious education" (Means 29). At times, Luther would also sell clothing out of his apartment to make more money.

"Time's 25 Most Influential Americans." Time (April 21, 1997), 40-61.

Powell has been promoting programs that interest him and speaking to young people across the country. He rose to high prominence in the military but has himself deplored the fact that the only way most blacks were able to rise in his generation was in the military and he seeks now to expand opportunity in other areas.

In 1968 after further training, Powell returned to Vie