Read the beginning of Chapter 1, "Awaiting Orders" from Black Officer in a Buffalo Soldier Regiment: The Military Career of Charles Young by Brian G. Shellum:

"When Charles Young graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1889, he hoped he had ended a difficult chapter in his life. His five-year struggle to earn his coveted diploma and receive a commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army was full of challenge and triumph. He repeated his plebe year after failing mathematics and graduated two months after his classmates because he had to make up for a deficiency in engineering. While West Point was a struggle for any young man, Young had to face this ordeal in a racially charged atmosphere where most of his classmates ignored him or refused to have anything to do with him. Yet he persevered and graduated.

Young departed West Point for home leave in Ohio in September 1889, full of excitement, anxiety, and questions. Would the Regular Army be like his experience at West Point? Could he survive a career in the army if the treatment he received was akin to what he had experienced at the academy? At West Point he had overcome the hurdle of prejudice to pass the twin challenges of discipline and academics. What would it be like to add the ordeals of surviving in a white man’s officer corps, leading black soldiers, and staying alive in combat? Young would find answers to some of these questions during his first posting on the frontier, but first he needed orders."

Brian G. Shellum is a senior intelligence analyst with the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization with the U.S. Department of Defense. He is the author of Black Cadet in a White Bastion: Charles Young at West Point, available in a Bison Books edition.