Colin Powell, the former U.S. secretary of state and the first Black person in the country’s history to fill the position, has died from COVID-19

Washington is mourning the loss Colin Powell, a former U.S. secretary of state, who died on Monday due to complications from COVID.

Powell was a four-star general who last held public office in 2005. He was 84.

The former U.S. official was well known as a moderate and pragmatist, and was instrumental in shaping the foreign policy of Republican presidential administrations for decades.

Remembering Colin Powell

Colin Powell was in top posts during the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 1989 US invasion of Panama, the 1991 Gulf War, the September 11 attacks, and the resulting US invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.

The four-star general served as national security adviser to former President Ronald Reagan from 1987 to 1989 and was the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under former Republican President George HW Bush and former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, from 1989 to 1993.

When he was confirmed as former President George W Bush’s secretary of state in 2001, he became the first Black person America’s history to fill that role.

At that time, Powell also became the highest-ranking Black U.S. official in history, later equalled by former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and surpassed by former President Barack Obama.