60 minutes rewind the nice thing about doing a story about colin powell is you don't have
to tell people who he is everybody knows who he is the first black chairman of the joint
chiefs of staff if it's crossed your mind that he may someday like to be america's first black
president he wouldn't he says he has no fire in his belly for politics however he doesn't rule out
serving as president of an american corporation the other nice thing about colin powell is that
he never forgets where he came from and you can always get a rise out of him by mentioning one
of the landmarks from his early days in new york city's south bronx the tiffany theater
don't tell me you've been to the tiffany theater doesn't it still exist i i'm not i think it's
still there i don't know the white tower is still there tiffany theater is still there
and uh i don't know what it's showing these days or whether it's even the theater anymore
but i think the building is still there that was a focal point for you guys every saturday
every saturday with our little grubby hands clutching a quarter or two we went to the tiffany
theater to watch the three or four movies that were going to be shown and stayed there most of
the day that kid from the south bronx became not only the first black chairman of the joint chiefs
of staff at 54 he's also the youngest our strategy to go after this army is very very simple first
we're going to cut it off and then we're going to kill it i guess that's how you talk when you come
from a tough neighborhood your neighborhood in the bronx it's changed a lot since you grew up there
several times it was destroyed totally after i left my home was
burned out by drug dealers and it was torn down by the city and now a garden apartment has been built
at the same location but it's still a pretty depressed neighborhood
just last year powell returned to that depressed neighborhood to talk to kids
at his old high school we had lots of drugs in my neighborhood on every street corner
with some potheader junkie who was trying to sell or deal or get others involved in it i didn't do
it never in my life not even to experiment for two reasons one my parents would have killed me
but the second reason is that we knew it was stupid people asked did you have a strong family
life and said yeah it was a powerful family well we didn't sit around like the brady bunch at
night talking about values i just watched how my parents live and that's how values
are passed on they were very important to you they were very important to me very important
they gave you that foundation i i think so you did i didn't know it while i was growing
up as a kid i was just another kid on the block and somehow after i grew up and left home and
started to realize what it was i left home with i discovered how important it was over the years
most of the men who've reached your level in the military came from
west point you came from the hunts point section of the bronx is there
do you get some strength in that and knowing that you didn't come up that way yet you still made it
um for those of us who did not start out with a clear career choice as our academy colleagues did
perhaps we get a little more satisfaction from the fact that we were late late starters
joking with my colleagues and the chiefs i sometimes refer to us as christmas help who stayed
on when powell got out of college he went into the army his parents who'd emigrated from jamaica
had dreams for their only son to succeed in america but as powell told students in vancouver
washington a lifetime of military service wasn't exactly what his parents had in mind
my mother was very proud of me when i went in the army but they always expected that i would come
out at the end of two or three years like all of the other members of the family came out after two
or three years and it was with some distress that she noted that i kept staying and i kept going
to these strange places germany vietnam korea and she always worried about me until the day
she came to my ceremony for promotion to brigadier general after i'd been in the army 20 years and by
then she finally resolved herself to the fact that i guess he's not coming out to get a job
powell never did come out to get a job in vietnam he earned the soldier's medal for valor by going
back into a burning helicopter to pull others out he rose rapidly through the ranks serving in
military and political positions finally becoming national security adviser to president reagan
in 1989 president bush picked powell to be chairman of the joint chiefs of staff
what racial barriers if any have you encountered up to your present position there have been
racial barriers along the way racism still exists in this country it is not something
in history i have been thrown out of of hot dog stands in georgia when i was a
young captain just coming home from a year in vietnam so that still exists in this country
and the way i deal with it is i'm going to beat you i'm going to beat you i don't care
what you think of me i don't care what you care what you think about my background whether i'm
black and white and yellow you're going to have to beat me as they say in basketball in my face
it was interesting in talking to the kids today the first question asked you as well as the last
question had to do with race with color did that work for you or against you in the early years
i suspect it worked both against me and for me i think in some cases people may have had lower
expectations of me because i was black and because of their own prejudices and in other cases people
whether i performed up to standards or not were going to put me down because
i was black so i suspect it both helped me and hurt me it was an advantage and a disadvantage
general powell says he owes his success to those who have gone before him like the tuskegee airmen
an all-black core of fighter pilots who flew more than 1500 escort missions in world war ii without
losing a bomber last year they held a reunion in detroit they were extraordinary men and women like
jackie robinson who came after them they stood above the crowd they broke no opposition to their
goals accepted no shortcuts and took solace in the fact that they were paving the way for the future
they had to do it while much of the power of the united states army
tried to stifle the entire enterprise while the civilians who surrounded them
wasted no opportunity to express their hatred so today i am chairman because of you
and i do it for you and i will never forget where i came from and i thank you
there has not been a war or conflict or a challenge that has
come to this nation where black men and women who were treated like dirt were nevertheless
willing to serve the nation in the hope that having served they would be treated better
and so when i came along most of the barriers had been knocked down by tuskegee airmen and
buffalo soldiers and many others so i benefited from those who went uh before me
do you think affirmative action has helped you i'm quite sure that it had
something to do with it i was helped in the early part of my career when i lived in the south and i
could do things on an army post that you darn well not better not think about doing often army post
was that equal opportunity was that affirmative action uh was that respect for human rights and
making sure that everybody wearing a uniform had the opportunity to succeed i think it was
one story i'd like you to tell me that i've read about is when you were driving somewhere in the
south and you were stopped by a highway patrolman who was giving out goldwater
pamphlets is that right now we're getting into politics but the story i have told i'm
surprised you found it when i came back from vietnam in 1963 and my wife was still with our
young son in birmingham while i was setting up a home in fort benning georgia so i used
to drive back and forth from birmingham to fort benning on the weekends in the little old
german volkswagen which were not that common in 1963 and i had my new york state license
plates because i'm a new york resident and i had a political sticker on the bumper
which was not the prevailing political sentiment around sylacauga alabama the bumper sticker said
all the way with lbj obviously he supported the democratic candidate for president and i thought
i was being stopped for a traffic violation of speeding which would have been quite legitimate
and he was handing out political bumper stickers of the other persuasion he was only a gold water
sticker he was handing out uh political bumper stickers of the other persuasion
and so he looked down at me this young black
soldier driving this foreign car with new york license plates and with the wrong bumper sticker
and he just looked down at me and said boy you ain't smart enough to be around here you need to
leave i said yes sir roared off to fort benning so that was the last time i ever indicated any kind
of a political preference publicly as an active duty officer the story will continue after this
do you have any plans to participate in presidential politics in 1996
i plan to vote you know
do you plan to play an active role in any administration that comes in as a possible
candidate as a president or no i don't i don't anticipate that would be the case i'm a soldier
i have no political fire burning in my belly
i've got two more years in this assignment and then i will go into private life i don't plan
to become a hermit and i don't quite know what i will do in private life never having tried
it before but once i get into private life i make a living for my family and i hope that i'll have
an opportunity for public service at some point in the future but i'm not looking for elected public
service perhaps i can serve my nation in other ways or serve my community in other ways
but i have no plans for uh elected political office uh i'm a soldier i know who i am
do you think that you could have the kind of achievement and a corporation
that you've had in the army i don't know i have i i have some reason to believe that
some corporations might think i might be useful somewhere in their organization
there's some guys who've gone before you who have said that when i got out of the army i
didn't have the same opportunity some black generals things have improved a little bit
america is beginning to understand the talent that exists in not only black
generals but other minority officers who didn't make general but who are now available
to take their place in the society now i've talked a lot about those wonderful young men
and women who were in operation desert storm with me and i brought one with me this evening
he's my aide and he doesn't know i'm going to do this but i want you to see him come on up here rod
stand
i've heard a lot of talk about the last 50 years i want you to know the next 50 are in the hands of
young aviators like this the last thing i want you to know about this fine young man
and general motors you just sit where you are because he's mine
he flew 40 missions in the gulf war
powell takes pride in everyone who fought in the gulf war
they were family didn't make any difference what color they were where they came from
whether rich or poor we're all americans 8 000 miles away from home and i keep saying to myself
that spirit that we had out there then we got to bring back to america we got to make sure it
exists that spirit of family has to be brought back to america here how do we do that that's
very difficult but i think it's a matter of being a lot more tolerant of each other recognizing
that whatever our racial differences or ethnic differences might be or even economic differences
we're all americans and we all have to live in this in this home that we call america do you ever
think that that kids that adults would perceive you as corny do you ever think you sound corny
when you say yeah i sometimes think i probably is sounding a little corny a little too preachy
but i realize that all i'm talking about are values values that i was raised with
you were probably raised with that are traditional american values
and even though it comes across as corny maybe i say that to let everybody
know that even if it is corny it's still valuable to hear it's good stuff to hear