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Born a South Carolina slave, Johnson Whittaker (1858-1931) was one of the first three African Americans to attend West Point, selected to fill the vacancy caused by the dismissal of James Webster Smith, the first Black man appointed as a Cadet. In 1880, Whittaker's military career was ended after three masked white cadets who had hazed him and attempted to force him to resign broke into his room, slashed his face, hands and ears with a razor and left him bleeding, unconscious and tied to his bed. Whittaker was expelled after being wrongly convicted at court martial of faking the assault in an attempt to discredit the institution. The court-martial verdict was later overturned by President Chester Arthur, but Whittaker never got his commission. In later years, he was a lawyer, high school teacher, principal and college professor in South Carolina and Oklahoma. In 1995, President Clinton presented Whittaker’s commission as a second lieutenant to his descendants.
I authored this web page because I had difficulty in finding an image of Whittaker to use for a block of instruction I prepared. I found this one in the August 1971 issue of American Heritage magazine ("A Black Cadet at West Point", Page 30). Since I'd spent so much time looking for an image of Whittaker, I thought maybe others had, too, so I decided to make this one available. I realize it's a stylized drawing. Even so, if it's remotely close to accurate, you can tell from the eyes and the set of his mouth that Whittaker wasn't someone to take lightly. |
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