During the First World War he served with 92nd Infantry Division of the United States Army in France.
After the war he worked as a clerk with the United States Postal Service in Boston.
[1] William James Edwards identifies him as an alumnus of Snow Hill Normal and Industrial Institute in his memoir Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt.
A critic compared the young poet unfavorably to the level of refinement in Paul Laurence Dunbar's work.
[2] He studied with James Holly Hanford who wrote an introduction to Carmichael's book of verse.