Charles Augustus Young

The son of slaves, Young was born in Kentucky and educated in Ohio. He became the ninth African American appointed to West Point, and only the third to graduate (1889). Young's military career was consistently marked by his achievement in mixing combat, command, and intelligence assignments with teaching, administrative, and diplomatic duties at home and abroad. He served for nearly three decades (1889–1917), experiencing combat in the Spanish‐American War, the Philippine War, Haiti, Liberia, and Mexico. On the eve of World War I, he was sixth in line for promotion to brigadier general.

Although genuine physical aliments (high blood pressure and kidney inflammation) constituted the official reasons for his removal from active duty, Colonel Young was also the victim of the 1890s and early twentieth‐century white redefinitions of manhood, gender, and race. The African American successes as combatants during the Spanish‐American War helped spark debate within the military on the suitability of using blacks for combat. The cultural attempt by African Americans to define their independence as citizens came into play in the enforced retirement of Colonel Young as the nation prepared for entry into World War I.

[See also African Americans in the Military.]

Bibliography

• Gerald W. Patton, War and Race: The Black Officer in the American Military, 1915–1941, 1981.
• Robert Ewell Greene, Colonel Charles Young, Soldier and Diplomat, 1985

Young, Charles (1864-1922) U.S. army officer. Born to former slaves in Mayslick, Kentucky, Young became only the third African-American graduate of West Point in 1889. Officers of his race had few opportunities for assignment, and he spent most of his service with the Ninth or Tenth Cavalry Regiments and teaching military science at Wilberforce University. He was the only black commissioned officer in the army during the Spanish-American War (1898). Though he missed action in Cuba because he was training black volunteers in Ohio, he did serve with the Ninth Cavalry helping to quell the Philippine War. After that conflict he served as a military attaché in Haiti and Liberia. In 1916 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel while leading elements of the Tenth Cavalry as part of John J. Pershing's Punitive Expedition into Mexico. When the U.S. entered World War I the prospect that Young might advance to command that regiment brought protests from white officers and U.S. senators, resulting in Young's forced retirement for health reasons. He rode on horseback from Ohio to Washington to protest and demonstrate his vigor, but to no avail. He was retired at the rank of colonel, the highest level achieved by an African-American officer to that date. Young was recalled late in the war to train troops, and then sent to Liberia again as military attaché in 1919. While visiting Lagos, Nigeria he fell ill and died. He was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Young, Augustus (pseudonym of James Hogan), (1943- ), poet. Born in Cork and educated at Christian Brothers College, before studying dentistry at UCC; he then became an epidemiologist and medical consultant. His first volumes, Survival (1969) and On Loaning Hill (1972), were followed by the evocative Rosemaries (1976), a sequence about growing up in Cork. The Credit (bk. i, 1980; bks. ii and iii, 1986) owes something of its philosophical wit to the example of Brian Coffey. Dánta Grádha (1975, repr. 1980) contains versions of the genre [see dánta grádha]. Lampion and his Bandits (1994) contains essays and poetry. Lightning in Low Places (1999) also returned to Cork.

Charles Augustus Young
Born	December 15, 1834(1834-12-15)
Died	January 3, 1908 (aged 73)
Nationality	United States
Fields	astronomy
Institutions	Princeton
Alma mater	Dartmouth

Charles Augustus Young (December 15, 1834 – January 3, 1908) was an American astronomer.

He graduated from Dartmouth and later became a professor there in 1865, remaining until 1877 when he went to Princeton.

He observed solar eclipses and worked on spectroscopy of the Sun.

He was a successful educator. He wrote a popular and widely-used series of astronomy textbooks, including Manual of Astronomy. Many years later in 1927, when Henry Norris Russell, Raymond Smith Dugan and John Quincy Stewart wrote their own two-volume textbook, they entitled it Astronomy: A Revision of Young’s Manual of Astronomy.

External links

• The New Student's Reference Work/Young, Charles Augustus

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