Justice at last.(Then and Now)

Only in the last 20 or 30 years has the U.S. government attempted to correct some of the injustices African Americans have endured in the military. Read on to learn the stories of a few of these soldiers.

Henry O. Flipper

In the 1800s, unfair treatment of African Americans in the military was common practice--particularly at the military academies at West Point and Annapolis. In the early 1870s, James Webster Smith, a young black man from South Carolina, was admitted to West Point. Despite constant abuse, both physical and psychological, Smith was determined to graduate. Dismissed just before graduation because he failed a philosophy course, Smith died two years later. …