Notes

The African American for my essay is Charles Young.

Charles Young was born in 1864 into slavery to Gabriel Young and Arminta Bruen in Mays Lick, Kentucky, a small village near Maysville, but he grew up a free person.His father Gabriel escaped from slavery in 1865, going across the Ohio River to Ripley, Ohio, to enlist as a private in the Fifth Regiment of the Colored Artillery (Heavy) Volunteers during the American Civil War. Accounts differ as to whether he took his wife and child with him then. His service earned him and his wife freedom. As a young woman Arminta had learned to read and write, and may have had status as a house slave before becoming free.

While teaching, Young took a competitive examination for appointment as a cadet at United States Military Academy at West Point. He achieved the second highest score in the district in 1883, and after the primary candidate dropped out, Young reported to the academy in 1884. He was not the only black student in the academy, (John Hanks Alexander entered West Point Military Academy in 1883 and graduated in 1887, Alexander and Young shared a room for three years at West Point). Young made some lifelong friends among his classmates. He had to repeat his first year because of failing mathematics. Failing an engineering class later, he passed after being personally tutored during the summer by George Washington Goethals, a brilliant engineer and assistant professor who took an interest in him. (Goethals later directed construction of the Panama Canal.) It was not unusual for candidates to require additional help in some subjects. Young's strength was in languages, and he learned several.

Young graduated with his commission as a second lieutenant in 1889, the third black man to do so at the time. He was first assigned to the Tenth U.S. Cavalry Regiment. Through a reassignment, he served first with the Ninth U.S. Cavalry Regiment, serving first in Nebraska. His subsequent service of 28 years was chiefly with black troops—the
Ninth U.S. Cavalry and the Tenth U.S. Cavalry, black troops nicknamed the "Buffalo Soldiers" since the Indian Wars. The armed services were racially segregated until 1948, when President Harry S. Truman integrated them by Executive order.

Charles Young died January 8, 1922 of a kidney infection while on a reconnaissance mission in Nigeria. His body was returned to the United States, where he was given a full military funeral and buried at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, DC. He had become a public and respected figure because of his unique achievements in the US Army, and his obituary was carried in the New York Times.

Charles Young (March 12, 1864 - January 8, 1922) was the third African-American graduate of West Point, the first black U.S. national park superintendent, first black military attache, first black to achieve the rank of COLONEL, and highest-ranking black officer in the United States Army until his death in 1922.