BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY 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 attaché, first black to achieve the rank of colonel, and highest-ranking black officer in the United States Army until his death in 1922.
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, but he grew up a free person.[1] 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.[1] 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 worked as a house slave before becoming free.
After the war, the entire family migrated to Ripley in 1866, where the parents decided opportunities were better than in postwar Kentucky. Gabriel had earned a bonus by continuing to serve in the Army after the war and had a stake to buy land. As a youth, Charles Young attended the all-white high school in Ripley, the only one available. He graduated at age 16 at the top of his class. Following graduation, he taught school for a few years at the newly established black high school of Ripley.[1]
West Point
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. The two young men 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.[1]
Career
Young graduated in 1889 with his commission as a second lieutenant, the third black man to do so at the time (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, starting 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 initiated integration by Executive order, which took some years to complete.[2]
Marriage and family
After getting established in his career, 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.[3]
Military service
Young 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, Young was assigned to Wilberforce College in Ohio, a historically black college (HBCU), to lead the new military sciences department, which was established under a special federal grant.[4] As a professor for four years, he was one of a number of outstanding men on the staff, including W.E.B. Du Bois, with whom he became friends.[1]
When the Spanish-American War broke out, Young was promoted temporarily to the rank of major of Volunteers on May 14, 1898 and commanded a battalion in the 9th Ohio Infantry Regiment. Young and the regiment served in the United States throughout the war and did not see combat. Young 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.
National Park assignments
In 1903, Young served as captain of a black company at the Presidio of San Francisco. When appointed acting superintendent of Sequoia and General Grant national parks, he was the first black superintendent of a national park. At the time the military supervised the parks. Because of limited funding, the Army assigned personnel for short-term assignments during the summers, making it difficult for the officers to accomplish longer term goals, such as construction of infrastructure. Young supervised payroll accounts and directed the activities of rangers.
Young's greatest impact on the park was managing road construction, which helped to improve the underdeveloped park and enable more visitors to travel within it. Young and his troops accomplished more that summer than had teams under the three military officers who had been assigned the previous three summers. Captain Young and his troops completed a wagon road to the Giant Forest, home of the world's largest trees, and a road to the base of the famous Moro Rock. By mid-August, wagons of visitors were able to enter the mountaintop forest for the first time.[5]
With the end of the brief summer construction season, Young was transferred on November 2, 1903, and reassigned as the troop commander of the Tenth Cavalry at the Presidio. In his 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.
Other military assignments
With the Army's founding of the Military Intelligence Department, in 1904 it assigned Young as one 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 US, he served for two years at Fort D.A. Russell, Wyoming.
In 1912 Young was assigned as military attaché 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 Young the Spingarn Medal, given annually to the African American demonstrating the highest achievement and contributions.[6]
In 1912 Young 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 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."[7]
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 (1 April 1916), he r outed 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.[8]
Because of his exceptional leadership of the 10th Cavalry in the Mexican theater of war, Young 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.[6] He was the first African American to achieve the rank of colonel in the US Army.[9]
Forced retirement
With the outbreak of World War I, Young likely hoped for a chance to gain a promotion to general. At this time there was widespread resistance among white officers, especially those from the segregated South, to being outranked by African Americans. A lieutenant who served under Young complained to the War Department and was told by Secretary of War Newton Baker to "either do his duty or resign." John Sharp Williams, senator from Mississippi, complained on the lieutenant's behalf to President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson overruled Baker's decision and had the lieutenant transferred. (In 1913, Wilson had segregated federal offices and established discriminatory hiring.) Other white officers in the 10th Cavalry became encouraged to apply for transfers as well.
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 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 Young from active duty, claiming it was due to his high blood pressure.[10] Young was placed temporarily on the inactive list (with the rank of Colonel) on June 22, 1917.
In May 1917 Young appealed to Theodore Roosevelt for support of his application for reinstatement. Roosevelt was then in the midst of his campaign to form a "volunteer division"for early service in France in World War I. Apparently, Roosevelt was planning to recruit at least one, and perhaps two regiments of African-American troops for the division – which he had not told President Wilson or Secretary of War Baker. He immediately wrote to Young 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." Roosevelt also promised Young "carte blanche" in appointing staff and line officers for the unit. But Wilson refused Roosevelt permission to organize his volunteer division. [11]
Young returned to Wilberforce University, where he was a Professor of Military Science through most of 1918. On November 6, 1918, after Young traveled by horseback from to Washington, D.C. to prove his physical fitness, he was reinstated on active duty in the Army as a full Colonel.[5] Baker did not rescind his order that Young be forcibly retired.[10] In 1919, Young was reassigned as military attaché to Liberia.
Wilberforce, Ohio
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 across the Potomac River from 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.[12]
Honors and legacy
- 1903 - The Visalia, California Board of Trade presented Young with a citation in appreciation of his performance as Acting Superintendent of Sequoia National Park.
- 1916 - The NAACP awarded him the Spingarn Medal for his achievements in Liberia and the US Army.
- He was elected an honorary member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.
- 1922 - Young's obituary appeared in the New York Times, demonstrating his national reputation
- 1922 - His funeral was one of few held at the Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery, where he was buried in Section 3.[12]
- Charles E. Young Elementary School, named in his honor, was built in Washington, D.C. The first elementary school in Northeast D.C., it was built to improve education in the city's black neighborhoods.
- 1974 - The house where Young lived when teaching at Wilberforce University was designated a National Historic Landmark, in recognition of his historic importance.[6]
- 2001 - Senator Mike DeWine introduced Senate Resolution 97, to recognize the contributions of the Buffalo Soldiers of the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, and Colonel Charles D. Young.[13]
- 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.[14]
Military medals
Young was entitled to the following medals:
- Indian Campaign Medal
- Spanish War Service Medal
- Philippine Campaign Medal
- Mexican Service Medal
- World War I Victory Medal
See also[edit]
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