Lesson 181:
Henry Ossian Flipper
An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted on 04/04/2025
as a courtesy to the United States Department Of Defense
April 2025: As an unasked-for service to the U.S. Department Of Defense (for whom I used to work, briefly, back in the very late 1980s, and so am therefore obligated to help out where I can); I am hereby supplying the next month's worth of military #blackhistory biographies, that seem to have been inexplicably misplaced on a handful of public-facing DoD websites. Having been both an HTML instructor and a web developer, I totally get how these kinds of errors can happen --certainly it's nothing sinister or deliberate. But until such time as the DoD can get its ducks back in a row, I humbly offer this space as a substitute repository of such information.
Accordingly we begin with the life of Henry Ossian Flipper, the first Black man to be commissioned in the U.S. Army and also the first Black cadet to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, in 1877.
Born enslaved in 1856 Georgia, Flipper's earliest years were working in a wood shop with his father, himself a skilled shoemaker and carriage-trimmer. After the Civil War he pursued his education, first at Missionary Schools and then at Atlanta University (today known as Clark Atlanta University) in 1869. His dream, however, was to attend West Point. Determined to make every conceivable effort, he wrote to his state Congressman, James C. Freeman, asking for an appointment. After some back-and-forth exchange of correspondence with Rep. Freeman, to his great surprise, he secured his appointment and was inducted in 1873, along with four other African Americans. He was the first to graduate as a member of the Class of 1877, though his time at West Point was of near-total social isolation due to his race. One of his first posts as a newly-commissioned second lieutenant was with the 10th Cavalry (the famed "Buffalo Soldiers") at Fort Sill, Oklahoma --this was also significant as Flipper was the first-ever Black officer to command regular troops. (Previously the all-black regiments such as the Buffalo Soldiers had been commanded by white officers.) The unit later served with distinction (if one may call it that!) in 1880, against Chief Victorio and his Apache warriors.
Unfortunately Flipper's career later took a downward turn in 1881, while he served as quartermaster in Fort Conchon, Texas: a nearly $2,000 discrepancy was discovered in disbursed commissary funds, and Flipper attempted to pay the shortfall out of his own pocket. Despite this ill-advised effort (and even with his fellow troops contributing their own funds to what smelled like a setup), the discrepancy was still discovered by his superiors and Flipper was court-martialed, receiving a Dishonorable Discharge in 1882. He remained in the region and established himself as an Indian translator and also as a surveyor, working for the Department of Justice's Court of Private Land Claims, even providing expert testimony in several land grant court cases. He later became special assistant to the Secretary of the Interior, from 1921 to 1923. He pursued a brief mining career in Venezuela, but returned to the U.S. in 1930. Over the course of his life he published two memoirs, "The Colored Cadet at West Point (1878)" and "Negro Frontiersman: The Western Memoirs of Henry O. Flipper" (published posthumously in 1963). Both publications are regarded as definitive, indispensable accounts of life on the frontier from the vantage point of a Black man.
The U.S. Army reviewed and corrected Flipper's case to an Honorable Discharge in 1976, concluding that his 1882 discharge was unnecessarily harsh. President Bill Clinton formally pardoned Flipper in 1999.
Search the Wayback Machine for this misplaced biography:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250312112846/https://www.army.mil/article/162598/lt_henry_o_flipper_was_first_black_officer_at_fort_sill
Next lesson - Lesson 182: Jackie Robinson's military career
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