Charles Young (United States Army officer)

Charles Young (March 12, 1864 – January 8, 1922) was an American soldier. He was the third African American graduate of the United States Military Academy, the first Black U.S. national park superintendent, first Black military attaché, first Black man to achieve the rank of colonel in the United States Army, and highest-ranking Black officer in the Regular Army until his death in 1922.

In 2022, in recognition of his exemplary service and the barriers he faced due to racism, he was posthumously promoted to brigadier general, and a promotion ceremony was held in his honor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Early life and education

Charles Young was born in 1864 into slavery to Gabriel Young and Arminta Bruen in Mays Lick, Kentucky, a small village near Maysville. However, his father escaped from slavery early in 1865, crossing the Ohio River to Ripley, Ohio, and enlisting in the 5th United States Colored Heavy Artillery Regiment near the end of the American Civil War.

The Youngs lived on Cherry Street in Ripley. Charles attended the colored school and was also home schooled by his mother. He showed a musical inclination early in life, learning to play the piano and violin and as a teenager played at the AME Church for Sunday services.

In the 1870s, the schools in Ripley were semi-integrated; there were separate black and white schools, but there were a few combined high school classes such as upper-level languages that were integrated, as were graduation exercises. J.C. Shumaker was superintendent of the schools and J.T. Whitson was principal of the colored school. Both men recognized Young's potential and encouraged him to complete his education. During his high school years, in addition to the usual courses, Charles learned German and French, graduating with honors in 1881. Of the twenty-one graduates in his class, Young was the only one of African descent. Each of the graduates performed and/or spoke at the ceremony. Charles played a piece on the piano and gave an oration entitled "Let There Be Light".

Following graduation, before entering West Point, Young taught at the colored school in Ripley. Although there were separate schools for colored and white students, the monthly teacher meetings were integrated. At one of these meetings, Young presented a paper entitled, "We Must Educate". Young took the exam and, of the twenty-six men who took it, he placed second. Each congressional district could nominate one cadet and Representative Alphonso Hart, of Ohio's 12th district, appointed William Stamats, but Stamats resigned the position. Hart then nominated Young in April 1884 and Charles left for West Point in June of that year.

West Point

When Young reported to the United States Military Academy at West Point as a cadet in 1884, there was already one other Black cadet, John Hanks Alexander, who had entered in 1883 (graduated in 1887). Young and Alexander shared a room for three years at West Point. Young had to repeat his first year when he failed mathematics, delaying his graduation until 1889. Although regularly discriminated against, Young made several lifelong friends among his later classmates, but none among his initial entering class. He later failed an engineering class, but he passed it the second time when he was tutored during the summer by George Washington Goethals, the Army engineer who later directed construction of the Panama Canal and who as an assistant professor took an interest in Young.

Upon arrival to West Point, Young was welcomed in as "The Load of Coal". Once, in the mess hall, a White cadet proclaimed that he would not take food from a platter that Young had already taken from. Young passed the White cadet the plate first, allowing him to take from it, then he himself took from the plate. Upperclassmen targeted and demerited Young 140 times, which was considered unusually high. Whereas Young's peers were referred to solely by their last names, Young was called "Mr. Young" as a kind of feigned deference. A White classmate of Young's, Major General Charles D. Rhodes, later reported that it was a practice of Young to converse with some of the servants at West Point in German to maintain some human interaction.

Toward the end of his five-year stay at West Point, the merciless discrimination and taunts decreased. Due to his perseverance, some of Young's classmates began to see past the color of his skin. Despite this and by his own admission, Young's time at West Point was fraught with difficulty.

Career

Young graduated in 1889 (Cullum number 3330) with his commission as a second lieutenant, the third Black man to do so at the time (after Henry Ossian Flipper and John Hanks Alexander, and the last one until Benjamin O. Davis Jr. in 1936). He was first assigned to the Tenth U.S. Cavalry Regiment. Through a reassignment, he served first with the Ninth U.S. Cavalry Regiment, 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 issued executive order.

Marriage and family

Young 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 1909 when Young and his family were stationed in the Philippines.

Military service

thumb|right|Captain Charles Young in 1903

Young began his service with the Ninth Cavalry, from 1889 to 1890 he served at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, and from 1890 to 1894 at Fort Duchesne, Utah.

In 1894, he was assigned to Wilberforce University in Ohio, an historically black college (HBCU), to lead the new military sciences department, established under a special federal grant. A professor for four years, he was one of several outstanding men on staff, including W. E. B. Du Bois, who became his close friend.

National Park assignments

In 1903, Young served as captain of a black company at the Presidio of San Francisco. He was then appointed acting superintendent of Sequoia and General Grant national parks, becoming the first Black superintendent of a national park. (At that time the military supervised all national parks.) Because of limited funding, however, the Army assigned its soldiers for short-term assignments during the summers, which made it difficult for the officers to accomplish longer-term goals. Young supervised payroll accounts and directed the activities of rangers.

Young's greatest impact on the park was managing road construction, which allow more visitors to enjoy it. Young's men accomplished more that summer than had been done under the three officers assigned to the park during the previous three summers. Captain Young's troops completed a road to the Giant Forest, home of the world's largest trees, and a road to the base of Moro Rock. By mid-August, the wagons of visitors could enter the mountaintop forest for the first time.

With the end of the brief summer construction season, Young was transferred on November 2, 1903, and reassigned as a troop commander of the Tenth Cavalry at the Presidio. In his final report on Sequoia Park to the Secretary of the Interior, he recommended that the government acquire privately held lands there. This recommendation was noted in legislation when it was introduced in the United States House of Representatives.

Other military assignments

thumb|left|upright=1.2|"The Late Col. Charles Young," cartoon by [[Charles Alston, 1943]]

With the Army's founding of the Military Intelligence Department, in 1904 it assigned Young as one of the first military attachés, serving in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He was to collect intelligence on different groups in Haiti, to help identify forces that might destabilize the government. He served there for three years.

In 1908, Young was sent to the Philippines to join his Ninth Regiment and command a squadron of two troops. It was his second tour there. After his return to the United States, he served for two years at Fort D. A. Russell, Wyoming.

In 1912, Young was assigned as military attaché to Liberia, the first African American to hold that post. On August 28 of that year, he was promoted to major, becoming the first African American to have been promoted to that rank or its equivalent in the regular U. S. armed services. For three years, he served as an expert adviser to the Liberian government and also took a direct role in supervising construction of the country's infrastructure. For his achievements, in 1916 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) awarded Young the Spingarn Medal, given annually to the African American demonstrating the highest achievement and contributions.

In 1912, Young published The Military Morale of Nations and Races, a 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 servile or un-military races (such as Negroes and Jews) displayed martial virtues when fighting for democratic societies. Thus the key to raising an effective mass army from among a polyglot American people was to link patriotic service with fulfillment of the democratic promise of equal rights and fair play for all. Young's book was 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 Pancho Villa's forces at Agua Caliente (April 1, 1916), he routed the opposing forces without losing a single man.

thumb|right|Young in 1916, shortly before his promotion to [[lieutenant colonel.]]

Because of his exceptional leadership of the 10th Cavalry in the Mexican theater of war, Young was promoted to lieutenant colonel on July 1, 1916,

Forced retirement

thumb|left|Young 1919

With the United States about to enter World War I, Young stood a good chance of being promoted to brigadier general. However, there was widespread resistance among White officers, particularly those from the segregated South, who did not want to be outranked by an African American. A Southern White lieutenant, Albert Dockery who served under Young complained to the War Department that he did not wish to serve under a Black man, and Secretary of War Newton D. Baker replied that he should "either do his duty or resign." John Sharp Williams, senator from Mississippi, complained on the lieutenant's behalf to President Woodrow Wilson. The President overruled Baker's decision and had the lieutenant transferred.

Baker considered sending Young to Fort Des Moines, an officer training camp for African Americans. However, Baker realized that if Young were allowed to fight in Europe with Black troops under his command, he would be eligible for promotion to brigadier general, and it would be impossible not to have White officers serving under him. The War Department instead removed Young from active duty, claiming it was due to his high blood pressure. Young was placed temporarily on the inactive list (with the rank of colonel on June 22, 1917.

Young returned to Wilberforce University, where he was a professor of military science through most of 1918. On November 6, 1918, after he had traveled by horseback from Wilberforce, Ohio, to Washington, D.C., to prove his physical fitness, he was reinstated on active duty as a colonel. More than a year after his death, Young's body was finally exhumed and brought back to American soil. When his body finally made it to New York, he received a hero's welcome. There were large crowds of people there, all to pay honor to Young's long and accomplished military career. He was the fourth soldier to receive a funeral in Arlington Memorial Amphitheater. He is buried with a large tombstone that states his name, military rank, and year of birth and death; its other side simply says "Young".

Honors and legacy

thumb|left|upright=1.2|Young's house near [[Wilberforce, Ohio]]

Honors

Charles Young received honors through his life. One he was presented with was a citation in appreciation of his performance as Acting Superintendent of Sequoia National Park by The Visalia, California, Board of Trade. Later on in 1912, he was elected as an honorary member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity. He was the second honorary member to be elected to the fraternity. Finally, before his death in 1922, The NAACP awarded him the Spingarn Medal for his achievements in Liberia and the US Army in 1916. Beshear's request for federal recognition of Young's promotion was approved by Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Gil Cisneros on November 1, 2021, with the recognition made effective on February 1, 2022.

From 1941 to 1943, the Colonel Charles Young Soldiers Club was a recreation center for black soldiers in Trenton, New Jersey. After these accomplishments, it was not until 1974 that the house where Young lived when teaching at Wilberforce University was designated a National Historic Landmark, in recognition of his historic importance. In 2013, President Barack Obama used the Antiquities Act to designate Young's house as the 401st unit of the National Park System, the Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument. In 2018, California passed legislation to name California State Route 198 as Colonel Charles Young Memorial Highway. The State Route's east end is in Sequoia National Park where Young served as superintendent. In 2023, Kentucky designated the area from the Camp Nelson National Monument in Jessamine County to the Ohio border at Mays Lick, as the "Brigadier General Charles Young Memorial Historical Corridor". In 2024, Ohio also designated some of its roadways as the "Brigadier General Charles Young Memorial Historical Corridor": U.S. Route 42 at Campus Drive (on the Wilberforce University campus), past the Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument, southwest to US 68, south to US 62, through Young's hometown of Ripley, to the Simon Kenton Memorial Bridge which crosses to Kentucky, for a distance of approximately .

Colonel Charles Young Triangle, a small park in Harlem at Macombs Place and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard between West 153rd and 154th street, was originally known as Harlem Lane Park and was renamed in Young's honor by the New York City Board of Aldermen in 1937.

In addition to Colonel Charles Young Triangle, Brig. Gen. Charles Young Playground in Harlem opened in 1944. It was named in his honor and serves as a major recreational space.

Literary legacy

Along with the legacy from acknowledgements and awards, Young has also taken on a presence in African American art and literature. One of the most notable instances was a 1925 poem by Countée Cullen "In Memory of Colonel Charles Young." The poem accurately predicts the legacy Colonel Charles Young would have for years to come. The poem uses imagery, including Charles Young's resting place in the cemetery where "above your grave the tom-toms throb/ and the hills are weird with light." After Cullen describes a dark world that Young is emerged in, he ends with a hopeful message: "From your rich dust and slaughtered will/ A tree with tongues will grow."

W. E. B. Du Bois, who spoke at Young's eulogy, claimed that "the life of Charles Young was a triumph of tragedy."

|align="center" |95px || Second lieutenant || 10th Cavalry, Regular Army || August 31, 1889

|align="center" |95px || Brigadier general || Regular Army (honorary, posthumous) || February 1, 2022