The Colored Cadet at West Point.

New York: Homer Lee & Co.,1878. 8vo, publisher’s gilt burgundy cloth, re-backed with original spine laid down. 4 preliminary leaves, [7]-322 pp., 2 portrait engravings (including frontispiece). Ownership inscription (upside down) in lower right corner of ffep and another in upper right corner of subsequent leaf.

The scarce autobiography of the first African American to graduate from West Point, primarily chronicling his four years there, with the ownership inscription of Otelia Cromwell, the first black woman to graduate from Smith College and the daughter of early civil rights activist John Wesley Cromwell, as well as the ownership inscription of her niece, pioneering African American professor Adelaide Cromwell, the first black instructor at Hunter College and Smith College, as well as the founder in 1969 of the Afro-American Studies program at Boston University.

Henry Ossian Flipper (1856–1940) was born into slavery in Thomasville, Georgia. Following the Civil War, he attended American Missionary Association Schools and Atlanta University in Georgia. Raised in a family that emphasized excellence (Flipper’s younger brothers all became respected members of their communities), Flipper obtained an appointment to West Point in 1873 through Republican Congressman James C. Freeman. The first chapter of this autobiography is devoted to an account of his family’s experience in slavery. Other chapters cover such subjects as terms and sayings commonly used by West Point cadets; daily life of the plebe and the ostracism he experienced; classes (academic and military); privileges bestowed upon cadets depending on their rank and class; various anecdotes, and more. Flipper recalls that he and James W. Smith, the first African American cadet at West Point, hoped “To be let alone…We cared not for social recognition…We would not obtrude ourselves upon" white students. Despite the hazing and isolation he experienced, Flipper graduated in 1877, with a rank of 2nd Lieutenant.

Following graduation, he joined the celebrated 10th U.S. Cavalry Regiment (the famed ‘Buffalo Soldiers’). Flipper’s military career was brief. He served four years in the West as a cavalry officer, during which he fought against the Apache chief Victorio in 1880. In 1881, he was posted to Fort Davis, Texas where a superior officer charged him with embezzling over $3000 in commissary funds, as well as conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. A court martial cleared Flipper of the embezzlement charge but found him guilty of unbecoming conduct and dismissed him from the Army in 1882. Maintaining his innocence, he would try to clear his name for the rest of his life. Flipper remained in the West for many years, continuing to work as a civil and mining engineer, thus becoming the first African American to achieve recognition in that field. His other works include Spanish and Mexican Land Laws (1895) and his posthumously published memoir, Negro Frontiersman, edited by Theodore Harris and published in 1963 (more recently a revised edition was published under the title Black Frontiersman: The Memoirs of Henry O. Flipper, First Black Graduate of West Point). The present book was published while Flipper was stationed at Fort Sill in Indian Territory.

Otelia Cromwell (1874–1972) was the daughter of Lucy McGuinn and John Wesley Cromwell, a journalist, historian, lawyer and civil rights activist. She received a B.A. from Smith College in 1900, an M.A. from Columbia University, and a Ph.d from Yale in 1926, becoming the first African American woman to receive a degree from Yale. Cromwell became a professor and chair of the English department at Miner Teachers College in Washington, D.C., retiring in 1944. Her scholarly achievements include the co-editing of one of the earliest anthologies of African American literature, Readings From Negro Authors, for Schools and Colleges, With a Bibliography of Negro Literature (1931), and most significantly, her biography of Lucretia Mott, published by Harvard University Press in 1958.

Adelaide Cromwell (1919–2019) was born in Washington, D.C. the daughter of John Wesley Cromwell, Jr., the first African American CPA to practice in Washington, and the grand-daughter of John Wesley Cromwell. She obtained a B.A in Sociology from Smith College, an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D from Radcliffe College. Following graduation from Radcliffe, she became the first African American member of the faculties of Hunter College and Smith College. In 1951, she joined the faculty of Boston University, and spent much of her career studying black leadership in Africa and America. She co-founded the African Studies program at BU in 1953 and founded the African American studies program in 1969—just the second such program in the country and the first to offer a graduate degree. Adelaide’s “mothering aunt,” Otelia, apparently either gave her the book offered here or left her library (or some portion thereof) to her. Smith College holds an annual Cromwell Day, celebrating the lives and contributions of both Otelia and Adelaide.

An important African-American autobiography with an especially compelling provenance involving an important family of African-American intellectuals.

REFERENCES: Library Company of Philadelphia. Afro-Americana, 1553-1906 (2nd ed.), 3714; Blockson 7868; Moebs, Black Soldiers, Black Sailors, Black Ink, 169; Greene, Black Defenders, p. 113; Harris, Theodore D. Henry Ossian Flipper at okhistory.org; Henry Ossian Flipper, 1856-1940 at docsouth.unc.edu; Lieutenant Henry Ossian Flipper at history.army.mil; Beginnings: Otelia Cromwell at libex.smith.edu; Adelaide McGuinn Cromwell (1919-2019) at www.blackpast.org; Adelaide Cromwell (Hon.’95), Founder of BU’s African American Studies Program, Dies at 99: A distinguished sociologist from a distinguished family at bu.edu.

CONDITION: Good, loss to top half of word “The” on spine, moderately rubbed.