ABSTRACT
General Colin Powell's success can be attributed to a great deal of hard work. His natural talent for leadership was developed by his experience in the Army. Born into a strong middle-class family of Jamaican immigrants, growing up in a relatively safe and cohesive multiethnic neighborhood in the Bronx, Powell attended City College when its standards were still high. He came from a social stratum that supplied, and still supplies, the military with most of its leaders. He entered the United States Army at just the point when the color of his skin was no bar to advancement if anything, as he tacitly admits, rather the reverse. He encountered formal, overt racial discrimination in its last days in the South. A natural soldier who loved his trade, he did well at each level of command and had opportunities for professional advancement and further education offered to him by an institution that also provided the company of comrades.
