The Obama administration on Monday will officially designate the Wilberforce, Ohio, home of Col. Charles Young -- West Point graduate, military veteran, and the first black national park superintendent -- as a national monument, becoming part of the National Park System.
Young's home has been a National Historic Landmark since 1974. It will join the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in New Mexico, First State National Monument in Delaware, the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument in Maryland, and San Juan Islands National Monument in Washington state on the list of new monuments, the White House said.
Young, the son of former slaves, graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1889, eventually rising through the ranks to become the first black man to reach the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army. He became head of the park system in 1903. Young died in 1922 while visiting Nigeria; he was eulogized by historian and civil rights activist W.E. B. DuBois, and buried in Arlington National Cemetery.