From the beginning of his experience at West Point in 1885, Charles Young fought to gain the respect of both the United States white-dominated society and the segregated, white-dominated, military establishment. At that time, he wanted to demonstrate that once given the same opportunities, all races are, indeed, capable of equal achievement. Therefore, when he entered West Point after Reconstruction had been dismantled, he fully understood "the burden of the Race" - his black race - that he was destined to carry.

For Americans today to understand how heavy that burden really was is to read the following statement by West Point Superintendent General J.H. Schofield, which appeared in his 1880 West Point Annual Report. I reproduced Schofield's statement twice within this etching, along with Schofield’s image:

"To send to West Point for four years competition a young man born of slavery...is to assume that half a generation is sufficient to raise a colored man to the social, moral, and intellectual level which the average white man has reached in several hundred years. As well might the common farm horse be entered in a four-mile race against the best blood inherited from a long line of English racers."

This statement reveals exactly the type of deep-rooted racism Young encountered in his five years of "struggle" at West Point. It should also be noted that he would have been graduated in the normal four years had he not had to repeat his first year. In my dramatization of Young's life, I explain in detail why it took him five instead of four years to be graduated from West Point.