Henry Ossian Flipper was one of the nineteenth-century West's most remarkable individuals. The first African American graduate of West Point, he served four years in the West as a cavalry officer but was court-martialed and dismissed from the service in 1882. He spent the rest of his long life attempting to clear his name. Flipper's record of accomplishment was significant for any individual in any time, and for a nineteenth-century black American it was phenomenal. As historian Quintard Taylor points out, in his post-Army career Flipper was a surveyor, cartographer, civil and mining...

After graduating as the first black from West Point in 1877, Henry O. Flipper was dismissed from the U.S. Army in 1882 following a financial scandal. He went on to enjoy a career as a land surveyor, scholar of mining and land laws, congressional aide, and writer and translator.
Black Frontiersman is Flipper s account of his service with the Tenth U.S. Cavalry in Texas and Oklahoma and the years that followed. Flipper s memoir was first published in 1963 as Negro Frontiersman, edited by Theodore Harris. For this revised edition, Harris has added a new introduction, expanded...