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96 4 “Being a Member of the Colored Race”: The Mission of Charles Young, Military Attaché to Haiti, 1904–1907 —David P. Kilroy Rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel by the time of his forced retirement from the U.S. Army in 1917, Charles Young served much of his career in uniform as the only black commissioned officer in the American military . As such he posed a persistent dilemma for both the military command structure and the political authorities in Washington, who shared a commitment to preserving segregation in the army. There were occasions, however, when Young’s race was seen as an asset by senior officers and politicians alike. Young spent a combined total of nine years serving as U.S. military attaché in what were then the world’s only two independent black republics, Haiti and Liberia. Young was chosen for these assignments almost entirely for racial reasons. His two separate appointments to Liberia came at the request of the U.S. State Department, where his primary role was to train Liberian defense forces. His mission to Haiti was conceived by the Military Information Division of the U.S. Department of War, and his goal was to gather military intelligence to be used in building a contingency plan for a possible U.S. occupation of Haiti. Young’s 1904 mission is illustrative of a number of different representations of Haiti in the United States in the early twentieth century. From the perspective of the U.S. government, Haiti was a weak and unstable state, vulnerable to European intervention and thus a danger to American hegemony in the Caribbean. It was in this context that the contingency plan for invasion was deemed prudent. From the perspective of the U.S. Army, Haiti was an exotic, tropical, and entirely black environment, a place where no white officer could be expected to succeed in gathering intelligence. As the sole black commissioned officer in the army, Young’s superiors determined that, “being a member of the colored race,” he was the ideal candidate for the post. From Charles Young’s perspective as a The Mission of Charles Young, Military Attaché to Haiti 97 member of the African American middle class, Haiti, the oldest black republic in the world, was a source of inspiration and pride, and he was determined to do his part to help preserve it from the clutches of European imperial powers, even if that meant facilitating a U.S. occupation. During his stay in Port-au-Prince, Haiti took on new meaning for Young, awakening in him a Pan-African identity that would prove increasingly influential over the course of his life. In 1904, Captain Young became the first U.S. military attaché ever posted to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Since the United States began sending military attachés overseas, the majority had been posted to the capitals of the major powers in Europe and Asia. After the Spanish American War, however, the United States began to consistently post military attachés to the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Much of the impetus for these new postings came from the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which unilaterally sanctioned U.S. intervention in the affairs of Latin American and Caribbean nations to preserve U.S. hegemony in the Western Hemisphere and fend off European intervention . The undertaking of the construction of the Panama Canal in 1904 greatly enhanced U.S. security concerns in the region (Vagts, 33; Kilroy, 60). As opposed to the more traditional diplomatic function of those who served in Europe and Asia, military attachés in Latin America and the Caribbean were charged with gathering military intelligence and compiling geographic surveys. This intelligence was critical to the successful implementation of the practice of “gunboat diplomacy,” whereby the United States intervened regularly in the affairs of its southern neighbors. Military attachés thus played a pivotal role in securing U.S. dominance in the region in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Young’s posting to Haiti and the Dominican Republic was designed to gather relevant intelligence to be used in the event that Washington determined a U.S. invasion of either island nation was warranted. The U.S. government perceived both Haiti and the Dominican Republic as perennially weak states, prone to internal disorder, and thus vulnerable to European intervention. Washington was determined to prevent any such intrusion into what since 1898 it...

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