Colin Powell: Commencement Address at Howard University

Context

After a long and distinguished career in the American military, General Powell announced his retirement from active duty in 1993. Because he had most recently been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the presidential administrations of George H. W. Bush and for a brief time under Bill Clinton, General Powell was widely acknowledged to be one of the primary architects of America’s successful participation in the First Gulf War. By late 1993, Powell enjoyed unprecedented popularity among voters in both major parties and many independents as well. Interestingly, some polls showed that he was actually more popular with white voters than with blacks, some of whom were wary of Powell’s cozy relationship with the Republican Party. Although he made no public announcements about his flirtation with national politics in 1994, it was widely believed that Powell was contemplating a run for the nation’s highest office. Powell hesitated to reveal his party affiliation, and both Democrats and Republicans made it clear that they would welcome his endorsement and perhaps his candidacy.

Powell took full advantage of the forthcoming publication of his memoir, My American Journey, in a long series of public-speaking appearances in 1994 and 1995, which many thought were thinly disguised campaign speeches. Commencement addresses at a variety of institutions were among his most frequent appearances during these months. Virtually all of these graduation speeches were formulaic attempts to urge his listeners to embrace traditional values of diligence and hard work and to dedicate at least part of their lives to public service. But the Howard speech departed sharply from that pattern in that it spoke directly to the issue of race hatred. The early 1990s had witnessed a spate of incidents on college campuses—among them some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions—which revealed that racial tensions could quickly boil over into public spectacle. In 1994 the dramatic murder trials of Colin Ferguson and O. J. Simpson would be brutal reminders of just how serious the racial divide continued to be in American culture generally. Ferguson, a Jamaican American, was convicted of murder—after weeks of outrageous courtroom tactics in which he attempted to defend himself—for the shooting of six white passengers on a Long Island commuter train. That same year, O. J. Simpson, the legendary black football star and sometime Hollywood actor, was acquitted of the brutal Los Angeles slaying of his white former wife and her male companion in one of the most controversial murder trials of modern times.

In April 1994, barely three weeks before Powell’s speech, Khalid Abdul Muhammad, a one-time lieutenant of the Nation of Islam’s leader, Louis Farrakhan, was among several black activist speakers at a rally at Howard University whose remarks struck many as racially inflammatory. Muhammad himself excoriated whites, especially Jews, as untrustworthy allies in the continuing civil rights struggle. Muhammad had made similar remarks on the campus of Kean College in New Jersey in late 1993, a performance so controversial that students at Emory University had canceled a scheduled appearance by Muhammad on that campus on the grounds that his rhetoric might fuel a racial disturbance. In Canada, officials at the University of Toronto canceled their invitation to Muhammad on more philosophical grounds. In the Kean speech, Muhammad characterized Jews as “bloodsuckers,” called for the genocide of white people, insulted Pope John Paul II, and excoriated gay rights. The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights organization, responded by taking out a full page advertisement in the New York Times condemning Muhammad’s rhetoric. Shortly thereafter, Congress voted unanimously to reject Muhammad’s speech as “outrageous hatemongering” of the worst type. Even Louis Farrakhan was moved to oust Muhammad from his official post in the Nation of Islam in response to the public outcry.

In his second appearance at Howard University in five months, on April 19, 1994, Khalid Muhammad attacked the legend of the Holocaust by insulting its survivors: “You make me sick—always got some old crinkly, wrinkled cracker that you bring up, talking about, ‘this is one of the Holocaust victims.’ Goddamn it! I’m looking at a whole audience full of Holocaust victims.” But Muhammad also ridiculed America’s black elite—particularly the Reverend Jesse Jackson—as “boot-licking, buck dancing” traitors who sold their souls and those of their people to whites. In short, Muhammad specialized in an outrageous and unusually militant version of the rhetoric of black nationalism and black supremacy, which unfailingly received a riotous reception from his disciples but was roundly condemned by more conventional audiences—both black and white. Muhammad would continue to be a public figure in America’s black nationalist movement for many years. He surfaced as the founder of the New Black Panther Party in 1995 and was perhaps the most visible organizer of the aborted “Million Youth” march in New York in 1997 and a rally in that city in 1998 as well as a smaller one in 1999. He died suddenly in Atlanta, Georgia, of a brain hemorrhage in 2001 at age fifty-three.

At Howard University, Muhammad’s remarks created more than their usual share of controversy. Almost immediately, the Anti-Defamation League denounced his rhetoric, and several donors to the United Negro College Fund threatened to recall their contributions. Muhammad attempted to explain his Howard rhetoric before a national television audience on The Phil Donahue Show a few weeks later, which convinced no one save his most enthusiastic followers. Moreover, the Howard University president, Dr. Franklyn Jenifer, defended his institution’s policy of free speech—though not the content of Muhammad’s remarks—but resigned his post in the face of mounting public criticism. It was in the midst of these emotionally charged circumstances that Colin Powell, among the nation’s best-known and most respected African Americans, gave his speech on racial hatred at Howard University on May 14, 1994.