By viewing post civil war events that parallel the life of Charles Young, we can now not only get a glimpse of what life was like for the newly-freed salves but we can also see how that era paved the way for lasting racism in American society...racism that had its roots in the belief in white supremacy as an ideology that undermined the very core of the principles upon which our nation was founded.

First and foremost, we must get over the illusion that we have solved our problems concerning racial prejudice with its negative stereotyping of all people of color- because we have not. The lingering need to continue to believe in white supremacy has become one of our primary national weaknesses, our "Achilles Heel."

The source of the beliefs that there actually exists a so-called "white master race" are the beliefs of white supremacist whose jaded rationale can be traced back to European Imperialism and Colonialism. Beliefs that were spread world-wide during the Atlantic slave trade of the 1500's... erroneous beliefs that were created primarily to justify slavery.

These beliefs finally culminated with the 20th Century horrors against humanity of Nazi Germany's white supremacist who actually believed they were the "white master race." Ironically, what most southern American white racists during the Civil War era failed to realize was that this theory of a white Aryan master race was first popularized in 1853 by the French royalist, democracy despising, aristocrat - Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau - who,himself, had a Creole grandmother and a Creole wife. All of this hypocrisy and institutional social insanity surrounding the source of these erroneous racist beliefs makes the telling of Young's story essential. His is a story of a black man who transcended the hate, hostility and adversity of his time to become an American leader whose character and achievements can be emulated today by all of America's youth.

At the dawn of the last century, Young's friend W.E.B. DuBois wrote that, "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." For us to continue this problem into the 21st Century, is beyond absurd...it's obscene.

Today, in order to restore our position in the global community as a world leader in the area of racial enlightenment, we must take a dominate position and the responsibility for acknowledging that racial equality is indeed a fact - a fact that was so eloquently stated by Abraham Lincoln when invoking the principles of human equality from the Declaration of Independence in his 1863 Gettysburg Address. Unless we, too, acknowledge and practice these truths of human equality in America today, it will be as if Lincoln's death, only five days after the end of the Civil War, was in vain.

By maintaining the moral high ground on this issue of racial equality in a global community - where people of color are in the majority - we, as Americans, can lead the way and restore our moral authority within the world.