Henry Ossian Flipper was born into slavery at Thomasville, Georgia, on March 21, 1856. He was the fifth Black cadet admitted to West Point and the first to graduate, fiftieth in a class of seventy-six on June 14, 1877. On November 29, 1880, he reached Fort Davis as acting assistant quartermaster and acting commissary of subsistence. He was the only Black officer to serve at the fort.
A new colonel
In March 1881 Col. William R. Shafter arrived with the First Infantry's headquarters, an officer with a reputation as a strict disciplinarian. He brought in his own officers and took the quartermaster's job from Flipper, leaving him the commissary. Most officers at the post shunned Flipper, and he spent his time with townspeople, which Shafter resented.
That summer the commissary funds came up short, by about $2,400 in one account and as much as $3,800 in another. Flipper did not report it. He later said he feared Shafter, and he was waiting on royalties from his book to cover the gap. He showed Shafter a check to suggest the money was there. Shafter had him arrested in August. The townspeople meanwhile repaid the fund, about $1,000 as gifts and the rest as loans, and Shafter put in $100, the only officer to do so.
The court in the chapel
In the fall of 1881 a divided court of ten officers met in the post chapel. Capt. Merritt Barber of the Sixteenth Infantry volunteered as Flipper's counsel. Flipper pleaded not guilty to embezzlement and to conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. Witnesses spoke to his character, and the prosecution could not prove he had taken the money. The court acquitted him of embezzlement. It convicted him on the second charge, for a false statement, financial records he signed knowing them wrong and a check written on an account that did not exist.
Barber asked for leniency, saying Flipper "has had no one to turn to for counsel or sympathy." The conviction carried dismissal. The Judge Advocate General, David G. Swaim, urged clemency, but President Chester A. Arthur confirmed the verdict on June 24, 1882, and Flipper was dismissed on June 30. The historian of Fort Davis concluded that he deserved a sharp reprimand and that the severity of the sentence points to racism. Flipper maintained his innocence for the rest of his life.
What he did next
He stayed on the border as a surveyor and engineer in Chihuahua, Sonora and Nogales, Arizona, served from 1891 to 1901 as a special agent of the Court of Private Land Claims, and worked in Venezuela for Pantepec Petroleum from 1923 to 1930.
In November 1976 the Army Board for Correction of Military Records acknowledged that he had falsified reports and lied to his commander, and still called the dismissal "unduly harsh, and therefore unjust." The Army issued a certificate of honorable discharge dated June 30, 1882. On February 19, 1999, President Bill Clinton granted Flipper a full and unconditional pardon, 117 years after his dismissal.
Start at the visitor center of Fort Davis National Historic Site, where the restored Commissary stands and the mailing address is Lt. Flipper Drive.