It always seemed pretty obvious to my teenaged group of friends and I that General Cummings was a thinly veiled version of Colin Powell. Powell was National Security Advisor in 1987. By that time he was arguably the most prominent African American general in the United States. Of course, T:2000 came out in 1984 (I think) but when I read through Gateway to the Spanish Main (which came out in 1987) and saw an inference (direct or indirect, I forget) that Cummings was Black, I figured that at the very least, Powell inspired this version of Cummings.
Though considering Powell's real life career as SecState, you have to wonder if he would have been so resolute against CivGov
.