Colin Powell said in a Sunday interview with CBS’ Face the Nation that the not guilty verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin was “questionable,” and also said that GOP efforts at restricting voting rights would backfire.
“I think that it will be seen as a questionable judgment on the part of the judicial system down there,” Powell said of the Zimmerman verdict. “But I don’t know if it’ll have staying power. These cases come along and they blaze across the midnight sky and then, after a period of time, they’re forgotten.”
Powell, the country’s first black secretary of state and chairman of the joints chief of staff, spoke to host Bob Schieffer about how far the country has come from the days when he was refused a cheeseburger at a restaurant before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Civil Rights leaders and activists commemorated the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, Saturday at the National Mall. President Obama will deliver a speech at the Lincoln Memorial Wednesday.
Powell added that President Obama’s comments after the verdict, where he spoke about living as a black man in America, were an “accurate characterization of some of the things that we were exposed to,” and that he’d like to see Obama speak out more passionately about race.









