Born in slavery, Charles Young (1864 1922) was the third black graduate of West Point, the first black U.S. military attache, and the highest-ranking black officer in the Regular Army until his death. Unlike the two black graduates before him, Young went on to a long military career, eventually achieving the rank of colonel. After Young, racial intolerance closed the door to blacks at the academy, and forty-seven years passed before another African American graduated from West Point.

Brian G. Shellum s biography of Young s years at West Point chronicles the enormous challenges that Young...