Colin Powell and "Mickey" Leland - 18 August 1989

Here's a clue for lovers of crossword puzzles and historical trivia – but he knew well that a hot dog eaten smilingly in America might be worth a dozen battleships. Who is he?

Well, since, I suspect the only person able to pin that down at once is dead – the late Denis Brogan – I shall tease you no longer.

The consumer of the hot dogs, though he had a choice of cold ham, smoked turkey, salad, baked beans, was King George VI. For he knew well that a hot dog eaten smilingly in America was worth a dozen battleships.

Under what extraordinary circumstances could the King of England have stifled his normal appetite and ventured on the humblest article of American maintenance food, which he almost certainly had never tried before? It was at a picnic given for the King and Queen, the present Queen Mother, by the President of the United States and Mrs Franklin Roosevelt, in the woods of the Roosevelt estate at Hyde Park overlooking the Hudson River.

It was June 1939, and with the Munich Agreement only nine months gone, and the prospect of war with Hitler very visible on the horizon, when the King and Queen arrived in Washington on a day of terrific heat, a flight of bombing planes roared over the procession to the White House and the cars of the King and the President, the Queen and Mrs Roosevelt, were convoyed by 60 tanks. A strange reception in what was then a very un-military country.

What President Roosevelt had in mind we shall never know, but his enemies, the growing body of Isolationists, as they were called, deeply resented what they thought they knew – that the suspect Roosevelt, who had spoken his mind often and bluntly about the character and menace of Adolf Hitler, was hoping, by the parading of a few military symbols, to ensnare the United States into the coming European war.

Of all the events of that memorable Royal visit, three were made much of in the newspapers of the time. One, the fact of the invitation itself and its timing. Two, the bombers and the tanks. Three, the fact that at a state dinner given in the White House for the King and Queen, one of the greatest contraltos of the day sang for the party. She was Marian Anderson, and she was black.

Well, nothing much this month has been written about the other events of that steaming summer 50 years ago, but this past week there have been in the papers and on television around the country 50th anniversary pieces commemorating not Marian Anderson's appearance at the White House but her non-appearance in Washington's Constitutional Hall for a concert already announced.

The sponsors of the concert were the Daughters of the American Revolution, a title that should frighten no one, for a less revolutionary group of Americans than these splendid matrons it is impossible to imagine.

Their organisation was founded in 1890 as a patriotic society of women. Any woman was eligible who could properly claim direct descent from anyone who, in military or civilian service, had helped the cause of American Independence either before or during the War of Independence, what Americans call the "Revolutionary War".

Another qualification so obvious that it never had to be mentioned was that you had to be white. "The purpose of the daughters" it was announced in the beginning, "was to perpetuate the memory of the early patriots to develop enlightened public opinion and to cherish and maintain and extend the Institutions of American Freedom".

You might think, now if that was their charter, they would have been among the first people to extend the Institutions of American Freedom to Negroes, as we called them then. But in August 1939, they cancelled the appearance of the famous contralto simply on the ground that she was a Negro.

It caused a shockwave of protest at the time, for Miss Anderson had been in Europe as early as 1933 and been treated and housed like any other first-rate artist. She was nothing short of a sensation.

She came home and sang at the Metropolitan Opera. She had established herself as one of those few black artists, Paul Robeson and the dancer Bill Robinson were others, who were allowed to cross and transcend the colour line. And then, 50 years ago this month, the Daughters of the American Revolution issued its blasting edict. "Simply", they said, "because she was black".

But this explosive reaction was as much as anything a slap at President Roosevelt, at his cheerful hosting of Britain's King and Queen, at his summoning Miss Anderson to sing before them, but also the Daughters were about as Isolationist as any other American body and they would show, too, that they were not going to be bamboozled by Roosevelt's flaunted bombers and tanks.

Fifty years later, the mood, the circumstances, of this foolish act have been all but forgotten. But the act itself was recalled in many a press and television piece, perhaps – probably, I think – because it offered such a bizarre, ironical contrast to two events that happened this week and showed how far this country has come, not so much since 1939 as since 1954 when the Supreme Court handed down its ruling about equal educational and social facilities for blacks and whites that sparked the Black Revolution.

Last week, President Bush announced that he'd found the man to replace the retiring Admiral Crowe as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff – that's to say the commander-in-chief, in fact, as the president is in name – of the army and navy, air force, marines, all the armed forces of the United States.

The new man is 52 years old. He's the youngest man ever to be appointed to the supreme command. His name is Colin Powell, General Powell. He's a four-star general and that is as elevated as you can get – Eisenhower was one, so was Bradley. But he's also black and, need I say, the first black man to rise so high in the American armed forces. He was born two years before Marian Anderson was barred from Constitution Hall.

Born in Harlem, the son of Jamaican immigrants, and raised in what today is the malodorous, drug-ridden slum of the South Bronx, his parents brought with them a notable asset or two for the rearing of a black child in those surroundings – good manners and a determination to rise above, in the new country, their lowly station in the old.

Young Colin was, as I'm bound to say, bright. He was also intelligent. Very. He sailed through high school and, as the first of his family, went to college, the City College of New York. His own ambition came into focus pretty early on. In college he joined the reserve officers training corps and became a soldier, just in time for Vietnam, where he was wounded and decorated for bravery.

Afterwards, he went up and up, in staff positions, becoming eventually the president's national security advisor, alongside Reagan's last secretary of defence. Evidently what kept Powell in high office and helped him to vault over 30 other generals for this highest post, was his impeccable stance as a serving soldier, not lured by any outside ambition, and his extraordinary knowledge of Congress and respect for its competing factions and lobbies.

When Admiral Crowe announced his coming retirement, a whole raft of generals, including Powell, were eligible for early retirement. Powell's cool head, his dependability and his connections with all sorts of congressmen brought him dazzling offers from business corporations, industries, arms manufacturers as a consultant.

Simply, he could have assured himself a fortune. He turned them all down and appeared to be headed for retirement on what is still a comparatively modest soldier's pension. Then, he got the call.

He is as weary as any other black of becoming whitey's favourite black. In a published piece written this year, he said, "Institutional racism is still part of our society. We cannot rest until every American sees and judges every other American on the basis of competence and character."

While the media were reporting and applauding the promotion of General Powell, a plane fell on a remote mountainside in Ethiopia. There were no survivors. Among the dead was a Texan, 44 years old, very little known here outside Washington, but known and almost revered in Ethiopia.

He was a black man named George Thomas Leland, called always "Mickey". The son of a short-order cook, whose husband deserted them both, Mickey Leland grew up in, you could say, Houston's Harlem, a district he represented in Congress.

He'd been in Congress 11 years and right from the start thought up odd programmes that puzzled some of his constituents and antagonised others. He sent young blacks from Houston to Israel to learn to know Jews and – over tough opposition for five years – he eventually got the House of Representative to set up a select committee on world hunger.

He'd been visiting Africa since the early '70s and in the past five years he spent much time in Ethiopia, using the $800million Congress had voted for starving Ethiopians. And in the Sudan, rescuing fugitive children from the malicious slavers who sold them for $20 a head.

Indeed, he spent so much time in Ethiopia that many of his constituents, not least the poor among the blacks, noisily reminded him that "Charity began at home". To which the Catholic Leland replied, "I don't want to sound hokey, but I was brought up as a Christian and you're supposed to help the least of your brothers."

Even his critics concede that Mickey Leland, however soon forgotten in Texas, will long be remembered in Ethiopia and the Sudan for simply saving thousands of young lives.

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