"Colonel Charles Young" (March 12,1864-January 8,1922)

Was the third  African American graduate of West Point,the first African American U.S. national park superintendent,first African American military attache,the first African American to achieve the rank of  colonel,and highest-ranking African American officer in the United States Army until his death in 1922,He was born into slavery to Gabriel Young & Armintra Bruen in Mays Lick, Kentucky,a small village near Maysville he grew up a free person.His daddy 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 Artilley (Heavy) Volunteers during the American Civil War.accounts differ as to whether he took his wife and child with then.His service earned him and his wife freedom,as did emancipation at the end of the war.As a young woman,Arminta had learned to read and write,and may have aworked as a house slave before becoming free.After the war,the entire family migrated to Ripley in 1866,where his parents decided opportunities were better than postwar Kentucky.Gabriel had earned a bonus by continuing to serve in the Army after the war and had stake to buy land.As a youth,Charles attended the all-white highschool in Ripley,yje only one available.He graduated at age 16 at the top of his class.Following graduation,Charles taught school a few years at the newly established African American high school of Ripley.
While teaching,Charles took a competitive examination for appointment as a cadet at the 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,Charles reported to the academy in 1884.He was not the only African American student in the academy;John Hanks Alexander entered West Point Military Academy in 1883 and graduated in 1887.The two young men shared a room for three years at West Point.Charles 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.(George later directed construction of the Panama Canal.)It was not unusual for candidates to require additional help in some subjects.Charles strength was in languages,and he learned several. Charles graduated in 1889 with his commission as a second lieutenant,the third African American man to do so at the time (and last one until Benjamin Oliver Davis,Jr.in 1936).He was first assigned to the Tenth U.S. Cavalry Regiment.Through a resassignment,he served first with the Ninth U.S. Cavalry Regiment,starting in Nebraska.Charles subsequent service of 28 years was chiefly with African American troops-the ninth U.S.Cavalry and the Tenth U.S. Cavalry,African American troops nicknamed the "Buffalo Soldiers" since the Native American Wars.The armed services were racially segregated until 1948,when President Harry Truman initiated integration by Executive order,which took some years to complete.
After getting established in his career,Charles married Ada Mills on February 18,1904,in Oakland,California.They had two children:Charles Noel,born in 1906 in Ohio,and Marie Aurelia,born in in 1909 when Charles and his family were stationed in the Philippines.Charles began his service with the Ninth Cavalry in the American West:from 1889-1890 he served at Fort Robinson,Nebraska,and from 1890-1894 at Fort Duchesne Utah.
Beginning in 1894 as a lieutenant,Charles as a lieutenant,Charles was assigned to Wilberforce College in Ohio,a historically African American college (HBCU),to lead the new military
sciences department,which was established under a special federal agent.As a professor for four years,he was one of  a number of outstanding men on the staff,including William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (AKA W.E.B.Du Bois),with whom he became friends.
When the Spanish American War broke up,Charles was promoted temporarity to the rank of major of Volunteers on May 14,1898and command a battalion in the 9th Ohio Infantry Regiment.Charles and regiment served in the United States throughout the war and did not see combat.Charles was mustered out of the volunteers on January 28,1899 and reverted to his Regular Army rank of first lieutenant.He was promoted to captain in the 9th Cavalry Regiment on February 2,1901.
In 1903,Charles serve as captain of an African American company at the Presidio of San Fransisco.When appointed acting superintendent of Sequoia and General Grant national parks,he was the first African American superintendent of a national park.At the time military supervised the parks.
Because of limited funding,The army assigned personnel fort short-term assignments during the summers,making it difficult for the officers to accompanish longer term goals,such as construction of infrastructure.Charles supervised payroll accounts accounts and directed the activities of rangers.Charles greatest impact on the park was managing road construction,which helped to improve the underdeveloped park and enable more visitors to travel within it.Charles and his troop accomplished more that summer than had teams under three military officers who had been assigned the previous three summers.Captain Young and his troops
completed a wagon road to the Giant Forrest,home of the world's largest tree,and a road to the base of the famous Moro Rock.By mid-Augusts,wagons of vistors were able to enter the mountaintop forest for the first time.
With the end of the brief summer construction season,Charles transferred on November 2,1903,and reassigned as the troop commander of the Tenth Cavalry at the Presidio.In fis final report on Sequoia Park to the Secretary of the Interior,he recommended the government acquire privately held lands there,to secure more park area for future generations.
This recommendation was noted in legislation to that purpose introduced in the United States House of Representatives.
With the Army's founding of the Military Intelligence Department,in 1904 it assigned Charles as one of the first military attaches,
serving in Port-au-Prince,Haiti.He was to collect on difference groups in Haiti,to help identify,forces that might destabilize the government.He served there for three years.
In 1908,Charles was sent to the Philippines to join his Ninth Regiment and command squadron of two troops.It was his second tour there.After his return to to the U.S.,he served for two years at Fort D.A.Russell,Wyoming
In 1912 Charles was assigned as Military attache in Liberia,the first African American to hold that post.For three years,he served as an expert adviser to the Liberian government and also took a direct role,supervising construction of the country's infrastructure.For his achievements,in 1916 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) awarded Charles the
Spingarn Medal,given annually to the African American demonstrating the highest achievement and contributions.
In 1912 Charles published The Military Morale of Nations and Races,a remarkably prescient study of the cultural sources of military power.He argued against the prevailing theories of the fixity of racial character,using history and social science to demonstrate that even supposedly service or un-military races (such as Negroes & Jews) displayed martial virtues when fighting for democratic
societies.They to raising an effective mass army from among a polyglot American people was to link patriotic service with fuliment of the democratic promise of equal rights and and fair play for all. Charles's book dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt,and invoked the principles of Roosevelt's "New Nationalism.
During the 1916 Punitive Expedition by the United States into Mexico,then Major Young commanded the 2nd squadron of the 10th,United States Cavalry.While leading a cavalry pistol charge against against Pancho Villa's forces at Agua Caliente (April 1,1916),he routed the opposing forces without losing a single man.His swift action saved the wounded General Beltran and his men of the 13th Cavalry,who had been outflanked.
Because of his exceptional leadership of the 10th Cavalry in the Mexican theater of war,Charles was promoted to Lieutenant colonel in September 1916.He was assigned as commander of Fort Huachuca,the base in Arizona of the Tenth Cavalry,nicknamed the "Buffalo Soldiers," until mid 1917.He was the first African American to achieve the rank of colonel in the US Army.With the outbreak of  World War I,Charles likely hoped fpr a chance to gain a promotion to general.At this time was widespread resistance among white officers,especially those
from the segregated South,outranked by African Americans.A lieutenant who served under Charles complained to the War Department and was told by Secretary of War Newton Baker to
"either do his duty or resign." John Sharp Williams,a senator from Mississippi,complained on the lieutenant's behalf to President Woodrow Wilson,Woodrow overruled Newton's decision and had the the lieutenant transferred (In 1913,Woodrow had segregated federal offices and established discriminatory hiring.)Other white officers in the 10th Cavalry became encouraged to apply for transfer as well.Newton considered sending Charles to Fort Des Moines,an officer training camp for African Amercans.Newton realized that if Charles were allowed to fight in Europe with African American troops with under his command,he would become eligible for promotion to Brigadier General,and it would be impossible to avoid having white officers subordinate to him.To prevent this,the War Department withdrew Charles from active duty,claiming it was due to his high blood pressure.Charles was placed temporarily on the inactive list (with the rank of  Colonel) on
June 22,1917.
In May 1917,Charles appealed to Theodore Roosevelt for support of his application for reinstatement.Theodore was then in the midst of his campaign to form a "Volunteer Division" for
early service in France in World War I.Apprently,Theodore was planning to recruit at least one,and perhaps two regiments African American troops for the division-which he had not told President Wilson or Secretary of  War Newton.He immediately wrote to Charles offering him command of one of the prospective regiments:"there is not another man [than yourself] who would be better fitted to command such a regiment." Theodore also promised Charles "carte blanche" in appointing staff and line officers for the unit.But Woodrow refused Theodore permission to organize his volunteer division.
Charles returned to Wilberforce University,where he was a Professor of Military Science through most of 1918.On November 6,1918,after Charles traveled by horseback from Wilberforce,Ohio,to Washington,D.C.,to prove his physical fitness,he was reinstated on active duty in the Army as a full Colonel.Newton did not rescind his order that Charles be forcibly retired.In 1919,Charles reassigned as military attache to Liberia.
Charles died 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.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.