James Webster Smith
American professor and a cadet at the United States Military Academy (1850-1876)
James Webster Smith (June 1850 – November 30, 1876) was an American professor and a cadet at the United States Military Academy. A former slave, Smith became a scholar and is recognized as the first black person appointed to a cadetship at West Point. His tenure at the academy, from 1870 to 1874, was fraught with racial prejudice and ended with Smith's formal dismissal a year before completing his studies. Embittered by his experience, Smith nonetheless found success as a professor at South Carolina Agricultural and Mechanical Institute. He died of tuberculosis in 1876.
Although Smith's military career was curtailed by racism, he later served as the Commander of Cadets at South Carolina Agricultural and Mechanical Institute.
In 1996, at the request of South Carolina Congressman John Spratt, President Bill Clinton approved the posthumous commission of James Webster Smith, to the rank of 2nd lieutenant of the U.S. Army. At the ceremony, Spratt stated: “It's an atonement, long overdue, for what James Webster Smith had to suffer at West Point.”
Often overlooked in black history, Smith's tenure at West Point is obscured by the accomplishments of Henry Ossian Flipper, the first black cadet to graduate from West Point.
Biography
James Webster Smith was born in 1850 in Columbia, South Carolina. His parents Israel and Catherine Smith were slaves.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Webster Smith” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.