Henry Ossian Flipper - Wikipedia

Thank you, my friend Maj Marty Hogan for making us aware that March 21 is the anniversary of the birth of American soldier, former slave and the first African American to graduate from my Alma Mater the United States Military Academy at West Point. He is USMA graduate number 2,690 and was commissioned as a cavalry officer in 1877 and was dishonorably discharged in 1882.
Since Henry O Flipper was pardoned posthumously by former President Clinton on February 19, 1999, the USMA register of graduates lists his discharge as honorable.

I am proud to recognize Henry of Flipper as a fellow graduate of USMA, West Point.

Image:
1. 1877 2LT Henry O Flipper;
2. Flippers Ditch - Fort Sill - Oklahoma;
3. Fort Davis, Texas 1887
4. 1877 Henry O. Flipper USMA cadet

Biographies
1. docsouth.unc.edu/neh/flipper/
2. history.army.mil/html/topics/afam/clinton_flipper

1. Background from docsouth.unc.edu/neh/flipper/summary.html
"Henry Ossian Flipper, 1856-1940
The Colored Cadet at West Point. Autobiography of Lieut. Henry Ossian Flipper, U. S. A., First Graduate of Color from the U. S. Military Academy
New York: H. Lee & co., 1878.
Summary


Henry Ossian Flipper was the first African American to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy (West Point). Born March 21, 1856, in Thomasville, Georgia, Flipper was the son of Festus Flipper and his wife Isabelle, both of whom were enslaved. Flipper's parents' master took the family to Atlanta where, after Emancipation, Henry Flipper was educated. In 1873, following his studies at American Missionary Association schools and Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University), Flipper obtained an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy. While African American cadets had been admitted to West Point previously, Flipper was the first to graduate from the Academy, receiving his degree on June 14, 1877. Finishing fiftieth out of a class of sixty-four, Flipper was given the rank of 2nd Lieutenant and assigned to the all-African American Tenth Cavalry. While serving in Texas and what is now Oklahoma, Flipper was involved in engineering and mining projects, including draining swamps, building wagon roads and installing telegraph lines. In 1880, he fought against the Apache chief Victorio and earned a commendation. In November 1881, he was posted to Fort Davis, Texas, where a superior officer accused him of embezzling $3,791.77 in missing commissary funds, as well as of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. Flipper maintained his innocence in this matter for the rest of his life. A court martial cleared Flipper of the embezzlement charge but found him guilty of unbecoming conduct and dismissed him from the Army on June 30, 1882.
As a civilian, Flipper remained in the West for much of his life and continued to work on engineering and surveying projects. He became fluent in Spanish and familiar with Spanish and Mexican land law, and published a number of books on legal subjects. In 1930 he returned to Atlanta, where he remained until his death on May 3, 1940. In December 1976 the Department of the Army stopped short of overturning Flipper's court martial but did grant him a posthumous honorable discharge and a military retirement. On May 3, 1977, a bust of Flipper was unveiled at West Point, and on February 19, 1999, President Bill Clinton pardoned Flipper of any wrongdoing. Much of what Flipper wrote after his dismissal from the Army has been collected in the anthology Black Frontiersman: The Memoirs of Henry O. Flipper, First Black Graduate of West Point (1997).
Flipper's autobiography, The Colored Cadet at West Point, was published in 1878, four years before the series of events that led to his dismissal from the Army took place. It is a chronological description of Flipper's family history, his birth and education, and the years he spent at West Point. Flipper painstakingly describes the course requirements, rules and regulations for each year of his West Point career. The text is therefore a useful read for anyone interested in military training and West Point history. Throughout the course of the text, Flipper also reprints contemporary newspaper and magazine articles written about his presence and performance at West Point, often commenting on their truth or falsity.
Flipper's discussion of his life before West Point is brief, but he does describe how, early in his life, each of his parents was owned by a separate master. Thus, when his father's master announces that he is moving, along with his slaves, to Atlanta, the Flipper family faces "every probability of a separation" (p. 8). However, Flipper's father prevents the family from being separated by giving his master money that he earned by working part-time as "a shoemaker and carriage-trimmer" (p. 7). Flipper's father's master uses this money to buy Flipper and his mother, and the family is able to remain together. After fleeing Atlanta briefly to avoid General William T. Sherman's March to the Sea, the Flipper family settles there in the spring of 1865. In 1873, Flipper obtains a commission to West Point.
Once at West Point, Flipper often focuses on how white professors and cadets treat him, both academically and socially. Flipper describes seeing West Point for the first time on May 20, 1873: "With my mind full of the horrors of the treatment of all former cadets of color, and the dread of inevitable ostracism, I approached tremblingly yet confidently" (p. 29). Flipper says that he and James Webster Smith, the first African American cadet at West Point, hoped "'To be let alone'" socially (p. 47). "We cared not for social recognition," he writes. "We did not expect it, nor were we disappointed in not getting it. We would not seek it. We would not obtrude ourselves upon" white students (pp. 47-48).
Flipper gives differing accounts of exactly how much social ostracism he endures at West Point. On the one hand, he admits that his was a "wretched existence . . . There was no society for me to enjoy--no friends . . . for me to visit . . . so absolute was my isolation" (pp. 106-107). On the other hand, he also notes that "I could and did have a pleasant chat every day, more or less, with 'Bentz the bugler,' the tailor, barber, commissary clerk, the policeman who scrubbed out my room and brought around the mail, the treasurer's clerk, cadets occasionally, and others" (p. 107).
Ultimately, Flipper determines that social class has a great deal to do with how individual white cadets treat him. Flipper believes that officers should be gentlemen, and that race-based cruelty is beneath gentlemen: "the majority of the corps . . . are gentlemen themselves, and treat others as it becomes gentlemen to do. They do not associate, nor do they speak other than officially, except in a few cases. They are perhaps as much prejudiced as the others, but prejudice does not prevent all from being gentlemen" (p. 121). In contrast, "there are some [other cadets] from the very lowest classes of our population" whose "conduct must be in keeping with their breeding" (p. 121). What saddens Flipper the most is how the behavior of the latter class of cadets often influences the behavior of the former.
The Colored Cadet closes by describing Flipper's graduation from West Point and its aftermath. Looking back over his time at the Academy, Flipper describes his "experimental life . . . at West Point" as "a sort of bittersweet experience" consisting of "years of patient endurance and hard and persistent work, interspersed with bright oases of happiness . . . as well as weary barren wastes of loneliness" (p. 238). Still, Flipper's last words in the narrative praise West Point: "All I could say of the professors and officers at the Academy would be unqualifiedly in their favor" (p. 322).
Works Consulted: Fredriksen, John C., "Flipper, Henry Ossian," in American National Biography, 3 June 3 2008, online database (Oxford University Press, September 2005); "Lieutenant Henry Ossian Flipper, U.S. Army 1856-1940," online article, June 3, 2008 (U.S. Army Center of Military History, October 3, 2003).

Harry Thomas"

2. The following has been extracted from history.army.mil/html/topics/afam/clinton_flipper.html
"Although born a slave in Georgia, he was proud to serve America: the first African American graduate of West Point; the first African American commissioned officer in the regular United States Army. He showed brilliant promise and joined the 10th Cavalry. While stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, he perfected a drainage system that eliminated the stagnant water, and malaria, plaguing the fort. Still known as "Flipper's Ditch," it became a national landmark in 1977. He distinguished himself in combat on the frontier, and then was transferred to run a commissary at Fort Davis in Texas. In 1881, Lt. Flipper was accused by his commanding officer of improperly accounting for the funds entrusted to him. A later Army review suggested he had been singled out for his race, but at the time there wasn't much justice available for a young African American soldier. In December, a court-martial acquitted him of embezzlement, but convicted him of conduct unbecoming an officer. President Chester A. Arthur declined to overturn the sentence, and in June of 1882, Lt. Flipper was dishonorably discharged. His life continued. He became a civil and mining engineer out West. He worked in many capacities for the government, as special agent for the Department of Justice; as an expert on Mexico for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; as a special assistant to the Secretary of the Interior. He died in 1940, at the age of 84. But even after his death, this stain of dishonor remained. One hundred and seventeen years have now elapsed since his discharge. That's a long time, even more than the span of his long life. More than half the history of the White House, indeed, of the United States itself. And too long to let an injustice lie uncorrected.
The army exonerated him in 1976, changed his discharge to honorable and reburied him with full honors. But one thing remained to be done, and now it will be. With great pleasure and humility, I now offer a full pardon to Lt. Henry Ossian Flipper of the United States Army. This good man now has completely recovered his good name. It has been a trying thing for the family to fight this long battle, to confront delays and bureaucratic indifference, but this is a day of affirmation. It teaches us that, although the wheels of justice turn slowly at times, still they turn. It teaches that time can heal old wounds and redemption comes to those who persist in a righteous cause. Most of all, it teaches us -- Lt. Flipper's family teaches us -- that we must never give up the fight to make our country live up to its highest ideals. Outside of this room Henry Flipper is not known to most Americans. All the more reason to remember him today. His remarkable life story is important to us, terribly important, as we continue to work -- on the edge of a new century and a new millennium -- on deepening the meaning of freedom at home, and working to expand democracy and freedom around the world, to give new life to the great experiment begun in 1776. This is work Henry Flipper would have been proud of. Each of you who worked so hard for this day is a living chapter in the story of Lt. Flipper. I thank you for your devotion, your courage, your persistence, your unshakable commitment. I thank you for believing, and proving, that challenges never disappear, but in the long run, freedom comes to those who persevere. "

Centennial Stories: Henry O. Flipper
The first black graduate of West Point left an engineering legacy at Fort Sill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AmgmFnNhe4

FYI LTC Stephen C. LTC (Join to see) Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen Lt Col Charlie Brown Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj William W. 'Bill' Price Maj Marty Hogan SCPO Morris Ramsey SFC William Farrell SGT Mark Halmrast Sgt Randy Wilber Sgt John H. SGT Gregory Lawritson CPL Dave Hoover SPC Margaret Higgins SSgt Brian Brakke 1stSgt Eugene Harless SSG William Jones SSG Diane R.

First African American to graduate from the military academy. I shudder to think of the hazing he took.

Great West Point information !