General Wood was early approached and asked to admit suitable candidates to Plattsburg.  He refused.  We thereupon pressed the government for a “separate” camp for the training of Negro officers.  Not only did the War Department hesitate at this request, but strong opposition arose among colored people themselves.  They said we were going too far.  “We will obey the law, but to ask for voluntary segregation is to insult ourselves.”  But strong, sober second thought came to our rescue.  We said to our protesting brothers:  “We face a condition, not a theory.  There is not the slightest chance of our being admitted to white camps; therefore, it is either a case of a ‘Jim-Crow’ officers’ training camp or no colored officers.  Of the two things no colored officers would be the greater calamity.”

Thus we gradually made up our minds.  But the War Department still hesitated.  It was besieged, and when it presented its final argument, “We have no place for such a camp,” the trustees of Howard University said:  “Take our campus.”  Eventually twelve hundred colored cadets were assembled at Fort Des Moines for officers’ training.

The city of Des Moines promptly protested, but it finally changed its mind.  Des Moines never before had seen such a class of colored men.  They rapidly became popular with all classes and many encomiums were passed upon their conduct.  Their commanding colonel pronounced their work first class and declared that they presented excellent material for officers.

Meantime, with one accord, the thought of the colored people turned toward Colonel Young, their highest officer in the regular army.  Charles Young is a heroic figure.  He is the typical soldier,—­silent, uncomplaining, brave, and efficient!  From his days at West Point throughout his thirty years of service he has taken whatever task was assigned him and performed it efficiently; and there is no doubt but that the army has been almost merciless in the requirements which it has put upon this splendid officer.  He came through all with flying colors.  In Haiti, in Liberia, in western camps, in the Sequoia Forests of California, and finally with Pershing in Mexico,—­in every case he triumphed.  Just at the time we were looking to the United States government to call him to head the colored officers’ training at Des Moines, he was retired from the army, because of “high blood pressure!” There is no disputing army surgeons and their judgment in this case may be justified, but coming at the time it did, nearly every Negro in the United States believed that the “high blood pressure” that retired Colonel Young was in the prejudiced heads of the Southern oligarchy who were determined that no American Negro should ever wear the stars of a General.