[Congressional Bills 114th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 4421 Introduced in House (IH)]

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114th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                H. R. 4421

   To award a Congressional Gold Medal to Colonel Charles Young, in 
 recognition of his pioneering career in the United States Army during 
                    exceptionally challenging times.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                            February 1, 2016

  Mr. Rangel introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
                    Committee on Financial Services

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
   To award a Congressional Gold Medal to Colonel Charles Young, in 
 recognition of his pioneering career in the United States Army during 
                    exceptionally challenging times.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Colonel Charles Young Congressional 
Gold Medal Act''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds the following:
            (1) Colonel Charles Young was--
                    (A) a distinguished African-American officer in the 
                United States Army;
                    (B) the third African-American to graduate from 
                West Point;
                    (C) a commander of troops in combat in--
                            (i) the Spanish-American War; and
                            (ii) the Mexican Punitive Expedition 
                        against Pancho Villa;
                    (D) the first Black United States military attache 
                to a foreign government; and
                    (E) the highest ranking Black Officer in the United 
                States Armed Forces at the outbreak of World War I.
            (2) Charles Young was born in 1864 into slavery to Gabriel 
        Young and Arminta Bruen in Mays Lick, Kentucky, a small town 
        near Maysville.
            (3) Following West Point, Young began his service with the 
        Ninth Cavalry in the American West. From 1889 to 1890 he served 
        at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, and from 1890 to 1894 at Fort 
        Duchesne, Utah.
            (4) In 1894, Lieutenant Young was assigned to Wilberforce 
        College in Ohio, a historically black college (HBCU), to lead 
        the new military sciences department, established under a 
        special Federal grant.
            (5) As the commander of an Army unit assigned to protect 
        and develop Sequoia National Park and General Grant National 
        Park in the State of California, Colonel Young is recognized as 
        the first African-American to be the Superintendent of a 
        National Park.
            (6) During his 32 years of honorable military service, 
        Colonel Young proved to be a valuable asset in the field of 
        military intelligence.
            (7) With the Army's founding of the Military Intelligence 
        Department, in 1904 it assigned Young as one of the first 
        military attaches, serving in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
            (8) In 1908 Young was sent to the Philippines to join his 
        Ninth Regiment and command a squadron of two troops. It was his 
        second tour there. After his return to the United States, he 
        served for 2 years at Fort D.A. Russell, Wyoming.
            (9) In 1912 Young was assigned as the military attache to 
        Liberia, the first African-American to hold that post. For 3 
        years, he served as an expert adviser to the Liberian 
        government and also took a direct role, supervising 
        construction of the country's infrastructure.
            (10) In 1912 Young published The Military Morale of Nations 
        and Races, a remarkably prescient study of the cultural sources 
        of military power.
            (11) During the 1916 Punitive Expedition by the United 
        States into Mexico, then-Major Young commanded the 2nd squadron 
        of the 10th United States Cavalry. While leading a cavalry 
        pistol charge against Pancho Villa's forces at Agua Caliente, 
        he routed the opposing forces without losing a single man.
            (12) Because of his exceptional leadership of the 10th 
        Cavalry in the Mexican theater of war, Young was promoted to 
        Lieutenant Colonel in September 1916. He was assigned as 
        commander of Fort Huachuca, the base in Arizona of the Tenth 
        Cavalry, nicknamed the ``Buffalo Soldiers'', until mid-1917. He 
        was the first African-American to achieve the rank of colonel 
        in the United States Army.

SEC. 3. CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL.

    (a) Presentation Authorized.--The Speaker of the House of 
Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate shall make 
appropriate arrangements for the presentation, on behalf of the 
Congress, of a gold medal of appropriate design to Colonel Charles 
Young, in recognition of his pioneering career in the United States 
Army during exceptionally challenging times.
    (b) Design and Striking.--For the purposes of the award referred to 
in subsection (a), the Secretary of the Treasury (hereafter in this Act 
referred to as the ``Secretary'') shall strike a gold medal with 
suitable emblems, devices, and inscriptions, to be determined by the 
Secretary.
    (c) National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center.--
            (1) In general.--Following the award of the gold medal 
        under subsection (a), the gold medal shall be given to the 
        National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in 
        Wilberforce, Ohio, where it shall be available for display as 
        appropriate and made available for research.
            (2) Sense of congress.--It is the sense of Congress that 
        the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center should 
        make the gold medal received under paragraph (1) available for 
        display or for loan as appropriate so that it may be displayed 
        elsewhere, particularly at other appropriate locations 
        associated with the life of Colonel Charles Young.

SEC. 4. DUPLICATE MEDALS.

    The Secretary may strike and sell duplicates in bronze of the gold 
medal struck pursuant to section 3 under such regulations as the 
Secretary may prescribe, at a price sufficient to cover the cost 
thereof, including labor, materials, dies, use of machinery, and 
overhead expenses, and the cost of the gold medal.

SEC. 5. NATIONAL MEDALS.

    Medals struck pursuant to this Act are national medals for the 
purposes of chapter 51 of title 31, United States Code.
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