Former Secretary of State Colin Powell is dead as a result of complications of COVID-19. Powell was a four-star general in the U.S. Army and the first African-American U.S. Secretary of State, serving under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. Powell was born in 1937 in Harlem, New York, to parents who both immigrated from Jamaica to the United States before he was born. In 1989, then-President Bush named Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the most powerful military position in the world. His family says he passed away this morning and that he was fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. They thanked the medical staff at Walter Reed and said "we have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American." Colin Powell was 84 years old.
Powell is survived by his wife of nearly sixty years and three children.