Black cadet forced out in racist attack gets posthumous West Point commission

Jet, August 7, 1995

Johnson C. Whittaker, one of the first Blacks to attend West Point Military Academy, received his officer's commission 115 years after he was thrown out of the military academy because of racism.

Whittaker, who was born a slave in 1858 in Camden, SC, was honored posthumously in a White House ceremony.

"After more than 115 years, this will right a wrong done to Mr. Whittaker," said U.S. Sen. Ernest Hollings (D., SC) in announcing the commission.

In 1880, Whittaker was in his fourth year at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY, when three cadets burst into his room and attacked him. He was the only Black at the school at that time.

The masked intruders slashed his face, hands and ears with a razor - saying, "like we do hogs down South" - smashed a mirror over his head and left him unconscious and bleeding. Earlier, he had received a threatening note.

He asked for an investigation, but no one confessed and school officials concluded that Whittaker attacked himself to discredit the military. The doctor who examined him testified he was faking, and handwriting experts said he wrote the threatening note.

He was expelled from school and court-martialed. Two years later, President Chester A. Arthur overturned the court-martial but the Black cadet never got his commission.

In February of 1994, Secretary of the Army Togo West Jr. called for a complete one-year investigation of the case.

The one-year study made clear that racism permeated throughout Whittaker's career, prompting President Clinton to provide the posthumous honor.