Former Secretary of the Army Clifford L. Alexander Jr. stands beside his official portrait which was placed in the Secretary of the Army Portrait Corridor at the Pentagon.
Clifford Campbell, Jr.
In 1977, Clifford Alexander Jr. created history as the first African-American Secretary of the Army. He was born in New York on September 21, 1933.
His father immigrated from Jamaica , worked at menial jobs while young, but by the time his only child was born he was managing a housing development. Cliff’s late mother was a welfare worker and a race-relations counselor to Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.
Young Clifford won a scholarship to Fieldston, a private school in Manhattan, where he was the only black child in his class until 9th grade. He later went to Harvard University where he was president of his class and a cum laude graduate in American government. Yale University Law School in 1958.