"The following pages were written by request. They claim to give an accurate and impartial narrative of my four years' life while a cadet at West Point, as well as a general idea of the institution there. They are almost an exact transcription of notes taken at various times during those four years."

Henry Ossian Flipper (1856 – 1940) was an American soldier, former slave and, in 1877, the first African American to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point, earning a commission as a second lieutenant in the US Army.