Author Book Signing at Local Bookstore
Brian G. Shellum, author of Black Cadet in a White Bastion, will be at The Written Word Bookstore in Ripley Ohio Saturday, March 4th, at 11 am for a book signing and a meet-and-greet brunch.
Born in slavery in nearby May's Lick Kentucky, Charles Young (1864–1922) was the third black graduate of West Point, the first black U.S. military attaché, and the highest-ranking black officer in the Regular Army until his death. Unlike the two black graduates before him, Young went on to a long military career, eventually achieving the rank of colonel. After Young, racial intolerance closed the door to blacks at the academy, and forty-seven years passed before another African American graduated from West Point.
Brian G. Shellum’s biography of Young’s years at West Point, Black Cadet in a White Bastion, chronicles the enormous challenges that Young faced and provides a valuable window into life at West Point in the 1880s.
Brian G. Shellum is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and retired from the U.S. Army. He is currently a historian at the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Signed copies of the book are $16.95 at The Written Word Bookstore.