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Army is an apt term for that cadre of women and men. They were literally at war, and as in war, they suffered many casualties. But they also won many battles - at lunch counters, movie theatres, bus stations and polling places - and eventually, with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the army thought the war had been won.

As the nation emerged from the battlefield and the decades of oppression that led up to it, it understood that the black man deserved "to be the special favorite of the laws,"^xviii that only in this way could the cycle of discrimination and disadvantage be ended, only in this way could we reduce inequality in income, housing, employment, education and life chances between blacks and whites.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. noted in 1963:

"It is impossible to create a formula for the future which does not take into account that our society has been doing something special against the Negro for hundreds of years.

"How then can he be absorbed into the mainstream of American life if we do not do something special for him now, in order to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis?"^xix

Thus was born "affirmative action" - the just spoils of a righteous war. Among other things, it gave Colin Powell the chance, as he is quick to acknowledge, to lead us in another righteous war.

Affirmative action is under attack today not because it has failed, but because it has been successful. It helped create the sizeable middle class that constitutes one-third of black America today.

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