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Early Military Career

Colin Luther Powell was born on April 5, 1937, in Harlem, New York. The son of Jamaican immigrants Luther and Maud Powell, Colin was raised in the South Bronx and educated in the New York City public schools.

He graduated from Morris High School in 1954 without any definite plans for where he wanted to go in life. It was at City College of New York, where Powell studied geology, that he found his calling in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC).

He soon became commander of his unit.

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This experience set him on a military career and gave him structure and direction in his life.

After graduation in 1958, Powell was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. While stationed at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, Colin Powell met Alma Vivian Johnson of Birmingham, Alabama, and they married in 1962.

The couple had three children: son Michael, and daughters Linda and Annemarie.

That same year, he was one of 16,000 advisers sent to South Vietnam by Presid