Flipper wrote about his West Point experience in his 1878 autobiography, The Colored Cadet at West Point.

Alexander died an untimely death while serving as a military instructor at Wilberforce University only a few months after he was posted there.

It should also be noted that African American cadets were not the only ones to be discriminated against at West Point during that period. There were two Hispanic, foreign cadets, who were also ill treated, they were:

Like Young, both of these Hispanic cadets often were also treated as social outcasts and were also often the victims of racial intolerance. As a matter of fact, cadet Zavala was referred to by a fellow white cadet as the "monkey -looking lad from Nicaragua."

Years later, Young - since he had became a career officer in the Army - seldom spoke openly about his West Point experience. However, the one time he did, he did not say much, but he said enough to describe his turmoil when he said that...

the worst thing that he could wish for an enemy would be to make him a black man and send him to West Point.

To better understand that Young's ill treatment at West Point was but a reflection of the severity of racial intolerance in America during his West Point years (1885 - 1889), we must understand how African Americans were being terrorized throughout the country while he was at West Point.

1885 - There were 74 know lynchings of African Americans.

1886 - There was an additional 60 reported lynchings of African Americans.

1887 - There were 70 black Americans known to have been lynched.

1888 - There were 69 black Americans known to have been lynched.

1889 - Nearly 100 black Americans were reported to be lynched.

And in 1890, a year after Young was graduated from West Point, in a South Carolina election called, "a triumph of ... white supremacy," Populist "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman was elected governor of South Carolina.

When Young entered the military after West Point, as an officer in a segregated U.S. Army, this was the reality of his world: