Born during the American Civil War, Charles Young's birth was celebrated by his mother and father on March 12, 1864. His parents, Arminta Bruen and Gabriel Young, were residing in their very humble, two-room, log cabin slave quarters on the outskirts of Mayslick, Kentucky at the time. Though his parents were enslaved when he was born, to say that Charles was born a slave is a misnomer because he never experienced the degradations of slavery due to the fact that his very sensible parents moved from Kentucky, a Southern Confederate State, to the free Northern State of Ohio when Charles was just a mere 14 month old toddler. As a matter of fact, the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the ratification of the 13th Constitutional Amendment in 1865 clearly abolished all slavery in the United States when Charles was just little older than an infant.

The fact that Charles Young never experienced - first hand - slavery's many degradations is of paramount importance. Frankly speaking, American history has been disturbingly silent concerning the fact that children of slaves were subjected to insidious child labor and inhumane child abuse on a monumental scale. Southern slave holders had carte blanche privilege to do with slave children what ever they pleased. Furthermore, some of these southern "so-called" gentlemen were nothing more than vile adulterous pedophilers whose insidious crimes - not only against innocent children but also against both slave women and men - were acts of inhumane cruelty that were atrocities even sanctioned by the laws of their respective southern states.

On the other hand, it should be noted that not all slaveholders were like those despicable pedophliers because, fortunately, the experiences of Charles Young's parents and grand parents during their enslavement were reported to be quite different. For instance, his mother and his maternal grandmother, Julia Coleman Bruen, were literate due to slaveholders, who put themselves at risk, to educate both Young's mother and grandmother. It was also reported that Charles' grandfather Bruen had been a freed man who at one time lived for a short period in Michigan.

Young's maternal grandmother was taught to read and write by a French family, who were slaveholders with the surname of named Byars. This French family was brave and courageous enough to defy their state laws in order to give Young’s grandmother an education, teaching her to read and write. It was also reported that during slavery, Young's grandmother had been offered her freedom by the Willetts family, who raised and educated their own children along with Young's mother Arminta when she was a child. After slavery, Young's grandmother Julia mentored him while he was in high school in Ripley, and she eventually became one of the first African American teachers in Kentucky.