Biography
Flipper was born into slavery in Thomasville, Georgia the eldest of five brothers. His mother, Isabelle Flipper, and his father, Festus Flipper, a shoemaker and carriage-trimmer, were owned by Ephraim G. Ponder, a wealthy slave dealer.
Flipper attended Atlanta University during Reconstruction. There, as a freshman, Representative James C. Freeman appointed him to attend West Point, where there were already four other black cadets. The small group had a difficult time at the academy, where they were rejected by white students. Nevertheless, Flipper persevered and in 1877 became the first of the group to graduate,earning a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army cavalry. He was assigned to the 10th Cavalry Regiment, one of the four all-black Buffalo Soldier regiments in the army, and became the first black officer to command regular troops in the U.S. Army. (Previously all-black regiments were led by white officers).
Read more about this topic: Henry Ossian Flipper
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)