Brigadier General Charles Young Triangle

7 Ave., Macombs Pl., At W. 153 St.

Manhattan

Directions via Google Maps

This text is part of Parks’ Historical Signs Project and can be found posted within the park.

Colonel Charles Young (1864-1922) was a distinguished army officer, cartographer, teacher, and diplomat who pioneered the entrance of African-Americans into fields that were previously closed to them. He was born in Mayslick, Kentucky on March 12, 1864, one year before the end of the Civil War. He moved to Ohio at the age of nine and graduated from Ripley Colored High School in 1880. When he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1884, Young was the ninth African-American to be admitted, and the third and last to graduate until nearly half a century later.

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