Colonel charles young horse blackjack
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Charles Young: The Life of a Soldier
Photo by Bettmann Collection/Getty Images
In June 1917, as it prepared to fight in World War I, the U.S. Army forcibly retired Charles Young, one of its most senior and accomplished officers. Why? It did not want any Black officer in command of white soldiers, and the outbreak of war combined with Young’s rank and experience would have made this inevitable.
A notable Black leader during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Young was perhaps the most important figure in African American military history. Born enslaved, he lived through the Civil War, the promise and eventual failure of Reconstruction, and the rise of Jim Crow. Despite tremendous obstacles, he eventually rose to the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army and forged what remains one of the most remarkable military careers of the era.
Young was born in Kentucky in 1864. His father was a Civil War veteran who had escaped slavery to serve with the U.S. Colored Troops. He instilled in his son a strong racial pride and a desire to serve. His mother was literate a
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Charles Young - Class of 1889 - Biography
Colonel Charles Young graduated from West Point in 1889. A Buffalo Soldier serving with the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 25th Infantry, Young eventually became the first African American to achieve the rank of colonel in the United States Army. Charles Young was born to ex-slaves in Mays Lick, Kentucky in 1864. In 1889 he became the third African American to graduate from the Academy.
As a second lieutenant, Young’s assignment options were limited to the four Buffalo Soldier regiments. After serving five years on the “Western Front” with the 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments, Young left to become a professor of Military Science and Tactics for four years, between 1894 and 1898, at all-black Wilberforce University in Ohio, where he became close, lifetime friends with fellow faculty member W.E.B. DuBois.
Young returned to active military service as a major in the 10th Cavalry of Buffalo Soldiers during U.S. operations in Cuba an
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Learn about the life and accomplishments of Brigadier General Charles Young, the first African American national park superintendent of Sequoia National Park.
"Indeed, a journey through this park and the Sierra Forest Reserve to the Mount Whitney country will convince even the least thoughtful man of the needfulness of preserving these mountains just as they are, with their clothing of trees, shrubs, rocks, and vines, and of their importance to the valleys below as reservoirs for storage of water for agricultural and domestic purposes. In this, lies the necessity of forest preservation."
-Captain Charles Young in Report of the Acting Superintendent of Sequoia and General Grant National Parks, California, October 15, 1903
Charles Young Arrives in the Parks
When Captain Charles Young, the new military superintendent, arrived in Sequoia and General Grant national parks, he had already faced many challenges. Born into slavery in Kentucky during the Civil War, Young's life too
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