This Former Slave Became The First African American West Point Grad

When Henry Flipper arrived at West Point, there were already three other black cadets attending the famed military academy. When it came time for Flipper to graduate, those three would be long gone, rejected by their classmates. An engineer, he reduced the effects of malaria on the U.S. Army by creating a special drainage system that removed standing water from camps. Flipper's life would take him from being born into slavery to becoming the first black commander of the Buffalo Soldiers.

Henry Flipper was born a slave in Georgia in 1856. After he was liberated in the Civil War, he remained in Georgia, attending missionary schools to get a primary education. He began to pursue his secondary education at Atlanta University, but soon set his sights higher. Flipper requested and received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1873 through Congressman Thomas Freeman.

When he arrived, Flipper found that he was not the only black student there. However, constant harassment, including bodily harm, hostility, and insults caused other cadets like James Webster Smith and Johnson Whittaker to drop out or face expulsion. Flipper persevered and graduated in 1877. He was the first African-American West Point grad and the first African-American commissioned officer in the U.S. Army.

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Though his specialty was engineering, Flipper was a more than capable officer. He was sent to bases in Texas and the Oklahoma Territory, where he served as quartermaster and signals officer. As an engineer, he was second to none, laying telegraph lines and building roads, and constructing a drainage system known today as "Flipper's Ditch," which removed standing water to prevent the proliferation of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. He would fight Apaches alongside his fellow soldiers, as brave in combat as he was competent in peacetime.