Duty Beyond the Battlefield by Donaldson Le'Trice D.;

Author:Donaldson, Le'Trice D.; [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press

PART 2

4.

HENRY OSSIAN FLIPPER

The Lone Warrior

Social equality, as I comprehend it, must be the natural, and perhaps the gradual, outgrowth of a similarity of instincts and qualities in those between whom it exists.

—Henry O. Flipper

On the warm spring day of May 3, 1940, one of America’s most enigmatic historical figures died at his brother’s home in Atlanta, Georgia. Henry Ossian Flipper in 1877 became the first African American graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Flipper was also the first African American officer ever to be court-martialed and discharged from the U.S. Armed Forces. The strange and tumultuous military career of Henry Flipper has for many decades been a long-forgotten and hidden stain within American military history. Yet, from the time of Flipper’s court-martial in 1881 and discharge in 1882 until his death in 1940, he fought to restore his manly honor. What is unique about Flipper’s fight to clear his name, though, is that he had virtually no support from the African American community.

In this chapter, our journey shifts to another path, one that looks at the strange and solitary life of a man striving to be a member of the American bourgeoisie while being unable to escape his main handicap—his blackness. We will explore why Flipper never fully developed a strong base of support among African Americans. How did this onetime hero to the black community and idol to James Weldon Johnson have the fight of his life without the support of those who helped him gain entrance to the U.S. Military Academy? In 1999, President Bill Clinton finally gave Flipper the full pardon and exoneration he had fought for since the day of his dishonorable discharge. The questions at the heart of this issue are these: Would it have taken as long if he had enjoyed the support of the African American community and major black leaders? And how did Flipper go from being an inspiration and a headline in every black newspaper to a simple footnote?

EARLY YEARS

Henry Ossian Flipper was born a slave on March 31, 1856, in Thomasville, Georgia, the eldest of five brothers. Methodist minister Reverend Reuben H. Lucky owned Flipper and his mother, Isabella Buckhalter. Festus Flipper, Henry’s father, was a shoemaker and carriage trimmer and was owned by a successful slave dealer named Ephraim G. Ponder. Flipper in his autobiography, The Colored Cadet at West Point, highlights the fact that both of his parents were of mixed racial heritage.1

In 1859, Ponder retired and wanted to relocate from Thomasville to Atlanta. Festus Flipper did not want to be separated from his wife and child, who would remain in Thomasville with Reverend Lucky. Ponder allowed Festus to hire himself out and earn his own money, enabling him to loan Ponder enough money to purchase his wife and son from Lucky. When Ponder arrived in Atlanta, he purchased twenty-five acres of land and erected a “superb mansion for his own family, a number of substantial frame dwellings for his slaves, and three large buildings for manufacturing purposes.

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