WASHINGTON – Former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell today said that Americans should be “proud” of the great advancements in civil rights made in the 50 years since the March on Washington.
“My thought is that this country’s come so far,” Powell said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I mean, It’s easy to say that, ‘Well, we’ve still got a lot of problems.’ And we do. But we should not overlook how far we have come since 1963.”
Powell, who was serving in Vietnam when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the march, said that when he returned home he recognized that it was time for America to change.
“I realized what was going on in the country. And as a solider I couldn’t participate in this, I could just watch it. And as I watched it unfold I said, ‘you know, this is a time for America to live up to its creed and this is the time for us to understand that segregation and Jim Crowism and these awful laws are not just a burden for African Americans, they are a burden for all Americans,’” said Powell.
He pointed to his own success as an example of how America has change and the vast opportunities now available to all Americans.
“I have seen things that I couldn’t have imagined. I have seen the President of the United States. I was able to achieve high positions in our government,” said Powell, who was the country’s first black secretary of state.
“Increasingly, if you have education, if you have the background, if you have the right grooming in your family, and you apply yourself and you have ambition, you can rise to any height you want to in this country-that is a remarkable improvement from 1963.”
Still, Powell said that if King was alive today, there would still be causes for which to fight.
“We should be very proud of what we’ve accomplished, but we should not say, ‘It’s all done, it’s all okay,’ because it isn’t,” he said. “And I think if Dr. King was here, he would be jabbing us. You know: education, housing, jobs, economic opportunity. That’s what he would be walking about, talking about and marching about.”