Army Forcibly Retires Colonel Charles Young on False Medical Pretenses to Block Black General

Colonel Charles Young was the highest-ranking Black officer in the US Army and third Black graduate of West Point. In 1917, with WWI expanding the Army, Young was next in line for promotion to Brigadier General, which would have made him the first Black general officer. The Army's solution: declare him medically unfit for duty due to hypertension. To prove his fitness, Young rode 497 miles on horseback from Ohio to Washington DC. The Army retired him anyway. He was briefly recalled at the end of the war. Young died in 1922 in Nigeria while on a military mission.