Black Soldier’s Pardon Comes 117 Years Late

President Clinton posthumously pardoned on Friday the first black graduate of West Point, whose military career was tarnished by a racially motivated discharge.

“This good man has now completely recovered his good name,” Clinton said during a ceremony with 17 descendants of Henry O. Flipper in the White House.

The president lamented that the pardon was a century overdue. But he urged Flipper’s family and a group of military leaders, including retired Gen. Colin Powell, to take heart in Flipper’s story.

“This is a day of affirmation,” Clinton said. “It teaches us that although the wheels of justice turn slowly at times, still they turn.”

Dr. William C. King, Flipper’s great-nephew, told the president that his family harbored no rancor for the system that took 117 years to clear his ancestor’s good name.

“I don’t think you can find a bit of anger in anyone in the family,” King said. “We learned, as was painfully revealed to Lieutenant Flipper, that anger would not gain you anything.”

Clinton’s pardon reversed an 1882 decision by President Chester A. Arthur to give Flipper the high punishment of a dishonorable discharge.

Although the pardon was a long time in coming, Flipper, who died in 1940, has been lionized for years. In 1977, his remains were reburied with full military honors in Thomasville, Ga., where he was born a slave, and Powell kept a photo of him on his wall while serving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“Like the rest of the family, I’m relieved that this has come full circle,” said King. King’s mother, Irsle Flipper King, was instrumental in beginning the push for Flipper’s pardon in the 1950s.

Flipper entered West Point in 1873. Ostracized by white cadets, he dedicated himself to hard work, graduating 50th in a class of 76. The first black commissioned officer in the regular U.S. Army, Flipper was assigned to Fort Sill, Okla., to the 10th Cavalry, the “Buffalo Soldiers,” one of only two all-black units in the Army.

In 1881, his commanding officer at Fort Davis in Texas accused Flipper of failing to account properly for commissary money entrusted to him. A general court-martial acquitted Flipper of embezzlement but convicted him of conduct unbecoming an officer--in a case the Army’s judge advocate general later concluded was racially motivated.

In 1976, the Army granted Flipper an honorable discharge, but only Clinton could formally overturn Arthur’s decision.