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The Fall of a Black Army Officer: Racism and the Myth of Henry O. Flipper

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The Fall of a Black Army Officer: Racism and the Myth of Henry O. Flipper is the biography of a former slave who became the first African-American graduate of West Point. He served as a commissary officer at Fort Davis, Texas, and was charged with embezzlement and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. A court-martial board acquitted him of the embezzlement charge but convinced him of the other, and he was summarily dismissed from duty. He labored to clear his name; his case became symbolic of racism on the frontier, and many assumed he had been railroaded on trumped-up charges because of his race. In The Fall of a Black Army Officer, author Charles M. Robinson III dares to challenge the popular assumptions about Flipper's trial, combing through evidence and arriving at the conclusion that Flipper's problems were entirely of his own making. Drawing heavily upon archival evidence to support its theories, The Fall of a Black Army Officer is a thought-provoking and critical examination of a landmark case in American history.