There are no personal accounts of African American officers who commanded white soldiers until the mid-1940s at the earliest. The United States Army was segregated until President Harry Truman's Executive Order 9981 which began the process of desegregation in the US Armed Forces in 1948, something which was accomplished by the mid-1950s. The reason as to why no personal accounts exists is because African American officers were not allowed to command white soldiers. Allowing African American men to command or give orders to white soldiers would have upset the racial hierarchy that was so integral to American society during the late 19th and early 20th century. African American officers were only allowed to command African American soldiers, while white officers could command both black and white soldiers.

The lengths that the United States Army would go in order to prevent an African American senior officer from taking command of white soldiers lies at the very heart of the fate that befell Charles Young.

Charles Young was born in Mays Lick, Kentucky, in 1864. He was born as an enslaved person, both of his parents being enslaved. A gifted student, Young entered West Point in 1884 and graduated in 1889 as the third ever African American to have done so. Three months after his graduation, the newly commissioned Second Lieutenant Young was assigned to the 9th Cavalry, one of the segregated regiments in the US Army. Between 1889 and 1916, Charles Young would serve with both the 9th and 10th Cavalry, leading an impressive career that saw him serve in both the Philippine-American War and the 1916 Punitive Expedition to Mexico. At the entry of the United States into the First World War, Charles Young was not only the first African American soldier to be granted the rank of lieutenant colonel, he was also the highest-ranking African American in the entire US Army.

As the United States went to war in Europe and experience a rapid expansion of its armed forces, the stage was set for Charles Young to be promoted to brigadier general. This would never come to be. In what is known as the tragedy of Charles Young, his rise in the ranks of the US Army came to an abrupt stop. If he was promoted to brigadier general, there would be nothing that could stop Young from commanding white soldiers and even white officers. This was something that the racial hierarchy in the US Army could not permit. During a medical check, army doctors reported that he had high blood pressure. While many other colonels found themselves being promoted to brigadier generals, Young was denied promotion and was forcibly retired from the US Army due to his apparent health issues. Young protested, claiming that he was healthy (together with testimony from his own personal physician). In order to prove that he was more than capable of performing his duties, Charles Young did what any cavalry officer would have done in that instance. From his home in Chillicothe, Ohio, the 54-year-old Young rode his horse 500 miles to Washington D.C. in order to prove his white critics wrong. Neither they, the Secretary of War, or President Woodrow Wilson listened. As of July 30, 1917, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Young, a veteran of two wars, the military attaché to Liberia, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, and the first African American National Park Superintendent was medically retired from active duty.

Young's fate clearly shows how far the institutions of the United States would go in order to uphold the racial status quo. The talents and leadership abilities of the exceptional Charles Young was wasted away on the fear of the mere possibility that a white man would have to serve under him if he was promoted. Ultimately, the first African American officer to attain the rank of general would be Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr. in 1940 -- a man who had called Charles Young his mentor.