(The Root) — On March 25, President Barack Obama will designate places honoring Harriet Tubman and Col. Charles Young as national monuments, giving them protection as American treasures worth preserving. According to a statement released by a White House official:
President Obama on Monday will sign a Proclamation to designate the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument in Maryland as a National Monument under the Antiquities Act. The monument commemorates the life of the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad who was responsible for helping enslaved people escape from bondage to freedom. The new national park, located on Maryland's Eastern Shore, includes large sections of landscapes that are significant to Tubman's early life in Dorchester County and evocative of her life as a slave and conductor of the Underground Railroad …
About the Charles Young buffalo soldiers national monument in Wilberforce, Ohio, the statement said:
The monument will preserve the home of Col. Charles Young (1864–1922), a distinguished officer in the United States Army who was the third African American to graduate from West Point and the first to achieve the rank of Colonel. Young also served as one of the early Army superintendents of Sequoia and General Grant National Parks, before the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916. The national headquarters of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, of which Col. Young was a member, made the property available for acquisition by the federal government for the purpose of establishing the national monument commemorating Young's life and accomplishments.