Gabriel Young received a bonus by continuing to serve in the Army after the war, and he had enough money to buy land and build a house.

During his high school years, in addition to the usual courses, Charles learned German and French, graduating with honors in 1881.

[6] Parker saw the same potential in Young that his teachers did and, consequently, did all he could to encourage Charles to excel; to move beyond his world in Ripley and to do his part to improve the status of his race in America.

In 1883, an ad in the Ripley Bee, the local newspaper, announced that an entrance exam for West Point would be given in Hillsboro, Ohio.

[7] Biographer Brian G. Shellum wrote, "Young was fortunate that his parents eventually settled in Ripley, Ohio.

[3] As one of the first African Americans to attend and graduate from West Point, Charles Young faced challenges far beyond the traditional hazing experienced by his White peers.

[17] Young graduated in 1889 (Cullum number 3330)[18] with his commission as a second lieutenant, the third Black man to do so at the time (after Henry Ossian Flipper and John Hanks Alexander, and the last one until Benjamin O. Davis Jr. in 1936).

[citation needed] Young's greatest impact on the park was managing road construction, which allow more visitors to enjoy it.

[23] With the end of the brief summer construction season, Young was transferred on November 2, 1903, and reassigned as a troop commander of the Tenth Cavalry at the Presidio.[where?]

In his final report on Sequoia Park to the Secretary of the Interior, he recommended that the government acquire privately held lands there.

For three years, he served as an expert adviser to the Liberian government and also took a direct role in supervising construction of the country's infrastructure.

He argued against the prevailing theories of the fixity of racial character, using history and social science to demonstrate that even supposedly servile or un-military races (such as Negroes and Jews) displayed martial virtues when fighting for democratic societies.

Thus the key to raising an effective mass army from among a polyglot American people was to link patriotic service with fulfillment of the democratic promise of equal rights and fair play for all.

[28] Because of his exceptional leadership of the 10th Cavalry in the Mexican theater of war, Young was promoted to lieutenant colonel on July 1, 1916,[24][25] the first African American to attain the rank or its equivalent.

He was assigned as commander of Fort Huachuca, the base in Arizona of the Tenth Cavalry, nicknamed the "Buffalo Soldiers", until mid 1917.

[29] With the United States about to enter World War I, Young stood a good chance of being promoted to brigadier general.

John Sharp Williams, senator from Mississippi, complained on the lieutenant's behalf to President Woodrow Wilson.

Baker considered sending Young to Fort Des Moines, an officer training camp for African Americans.

However, Baker realized that if Young were allowed to fight in Europe with Black troops under his command, he would be eligible for promotion to brigadier general, and it would be impossible not to have White officers serving under him.

The War Department instead removed Young from active duty, claiming it was due to his high blood pressure.

Roosevelt was then in the midst of his campaign to form a "volunteer division" for early service in France in World War I. Roosevelt appears to have planned to recruit at least one and perhaps two Black regiments for the division, something he had not told President Wilson or Secretary of War Baker.

On November 6, 1918, after he had traveled by horseback from Wilberforce, Ohio, to Washington, D.C., to prove his physical fitness, he was reinstated on active duty as a colonel.

Because his death took place in a British hospital, his body was required to be buried in Lagos where it remained for an entire year.

He is buried with a large tombstone that states his name, military rank, and year of birth and death; its other side simply says "Young".

One he was presented with was a citation in appreciation of his performance as Acting Superintendent of Sequoia National Park by The Visalia, California, Board of Trade.

In 2023, Kentucky designated the area from the Camp Nelson National Monument in Jessamine County to the Ohio border[disputed – discuss] at Mays Lick, as the "Brigadier General Charles Young Memorial Historical Corridor".

[52] The poem uses imagery, including Charles Young's resting place in the cemetery where "above your grave the tom-toms throb/ and the hills are weird with light.

"[53] After Cullen describes a dark world that Young is emerged in, he ends with a hopeful message: "From your rich dust and slaughtered will/ A tree with tongues will grow.

"[53] Cullen is implying that he believed Young was the start of a movement; as of 2014, African Americans make up more than twenty percent of active-duty Army members.

Young is also featured in The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy, where he serves as second-in-command to Major Archibald Butt during a secret mission into the Belgian Congo.