Good Morning...A First at West Point

[Okla-homey]

Jun 15, 1877: First black graduate of West Point

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Henry Ossian Flipper, USMA 1877

133 years ago today, Henry Ossian Flipper, born a slave in Thomasville, Georgia, in 1856, is the first black cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. His mother was a slave of Isabelle Flipper and his father, Festus Flipper, a shoemaker and carriage-trimmer, was slave of Ephraim G. Ponder, a wealthy slave dealer.

Flipper attended Atlanta University during Reconstruction. There, as a freshman, Representative James C. Freeman appointed him to attend West Point, where there were already four other black cadets.

Flipper, who was never spoken to by a white cadet during his four years at West Point, was appointed a second lieutenant in the all-black 10th Cavalry, stationed at Fort Sill in Indian Territory near modern Lawton, OK.

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Flipper and 10th Cavalry troopers tracking a Mexican bandit in Texas

Flipper was ultimately dismissed from the Army in 1888 based on trumped-up charges brought by his white commander that Flipper embezzled government funds. After his dismissal, Flipper remained in Texas, working as a civil engineer.

In 1898, he volunteered to serve in the Spanish-American War, but requests to restore his commission were ignored by Congress. He spent time in Mexico, and on returning to the United States, he served as an advisor to Senator Albert Fall on the revolutionary politics in that country. When Fall became Secretary of the Interior in 1921, he brought Flipper with him to Washington, D.C. to serve as his assistant.

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Flipper in 1877, his last year in the Army.

In 1923 Flipper went to work in Venezuela as an engineer in the petroleum industry. He retired to Atlanta in 1931, and died in 1940. President Clinton issued Flipper a posthumous pardon in 1999, 59 years after Flipper's death in 1940.

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Flipper's grave in his home town of Thomasville, GA.

In 1976, the first female cadets were admitted into West Point. The academy is now under the general direction and supervision of the department of the U.S. Army and has an enrollment of more than 4,000 students.

[Okla-homey]

PEOPLE! THIS POST HAS IT ALL! A PERSON OF COLOR, INJUSTICE, ACCOMPLISHMENT, WHITEY KEEPING A BROTHER DOWN, VINDICATION, etc.

[olevetonahill]

Did they recruit him to Play Foot Ball ?:pop:

[Jello Biafra]

good jorb homey...you got it all in that one! ;)

[Leroy Lizard]

PEOPLE! THIS POST HAS IT ALL! A PERSON OF COLOR, INJUSTICE, ACCOMPLISHMENT, WHITEY KEEPING A BROTHER DOWN, VINDICATION, etc.

Flipper was gay?

[Okla-homey]

Flipper was gay?

No. In fact, and I didn't include it, Flipper raised eyebrows among his fellow officers because he spent time hanging around the on-post quarters where a certain white daughter of a fellow officer resided.

At his court martial later, he beat the embezzlement rap. However, letters he had written to this white lady were introduced as evidence of his questionable conduct. Nothing steamy, but the mere fact a black man would presume to write letters to a single white woman, more than anything else, netted the "conduct unbecoming of an officer" specification which allowed them to cashier him.

I think that's the main reason President Clinton issued that posthumous pardon. It was a bullsh1t case, based entirely on the prejudices inherent in the era.

I'll add one other thing. Four years at a place like West Point, when none of your peers would speak to you, would succ like a giant succing thing. Comradery is the ONLY thing that makes that military academy existence bearable. Absent that, it is absolutely amazing he stuck with it to graduate.

[IBleedCrimson]

No. In fact, and I didn't include it, Flipper raised eyebrows among his fellow officers because he spent time hanging around the on-post quarters where a certain white daughter of a fellow officer resided.

At his court martial later, he beat the embezzlement rap. However, letters he had written to this white lady were introduced as evidence of his questionable conduct. Nothing steamy, but the mere fact a black man would presume to write letters to a single white woman, more than anything else, netted the "conduct unbecoming of an officer" specification which allowed them to cashier him.

I think that's the main reason President Clinton issued that posthumous pardon. It was a bullsh1t case, based entirely on the prejudices inherent in the era.

I'll add one other thing. Four years at a place like West Point, when none of your peers would speak to you, would succ like a giant succing thing. Comradery is the ONLY thing that makes that military academy existence bearable. Absent that, it is absolutely amazing he stuck with it to graduate.

never though of it like that. interesting perspective