1864-1922
Born in Mays Lick, Kentucky, Col. Charles Young was admitted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1884. Though he was ostracized because of racial prejudice, he persevered and graduated on August 31, 1889. Young’s military career began when blacks had just recently been allowed to serve but were still restricted to all-black regiments.
During that period, the black regiments in the Twenty-Fourth Cavalry earned respect when they rescued Theodore Roosevelt’s “rough riders” at San Juan Hill. Young, in charge of the Ninth Ohio Regiment in the Spanish-American War, advanced to become the highest-ranking black in the U.S. Army in 1918. In November 1919, he was appointed military attach