User:Rbenkim/sandbox

Ross Kim

Wikipedia Project

(WESTPOINT)

As one of the very first African-Americans to attend and graduate from West Point, Charles Young faced challenges beyond his white peers. He experienced racial discrimination from classmates and upperclassmen alike. Hazing was not an unusual practice at the male dominated military academies. Charles Young however, was subjected to a disproportionate amount of abuse because of his color.

There are many stories about Young’s struggles at West Point. Upon arrival to West Point, Young was welcomed in as “The Load of Coal”. Once, in the mess hall, a white cadet proclaimed that he would not take food from a platter that Young had already taken from. Young passed the white cadet the plate first, allowing him to take from it, then he himself took from the plate. Upperclassmen targeted and demerited Young 140 times, which would have been considered unusually high. Whereas Young’s peers were referred to by their last names, Young was called “Mr. Young” as a kind of feigned deference. One of Young’s greatest struggles at West Point was loneliness. A white classmate of Young’s, Major General Charles D. Rhodes, later reported that it was a practice of Young to converse with some of the servants at West Point in German to maintain human interaction.

Towards the end of his five-year stay at West Point, the merciless discrimination and taunts decreased. Because of his perseverance, some of Charles Young’s classmates began to see past the color of his skin. Despite this and by his own admission, Charles Young’s time at West Point was filled with difficulty.