James Webster Smith

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. After the abolishment of slavery, Israel, a mulatto man, worked as a carpenter before becoming one of Columbia's aldermen. When the Civil War ended, Smith attended school through the Freedmen's Bureau, one function of which was to provide an educational system for the newly freedmen during the Reconstruction Era. David Clark, a benefactor from Connecticut, was so impressed by the progress shown by Smith that he arranged for him to accompany Clark to Hartford to advance his education in the city's school system; the pair arrived in April 1867.

At Hartford, Smith continued to excel and later attended Hartford High School where he graduated with honors on April 22, 1870. On May 1, 1870, with the backing of Clark and Oliver Otis Howard, he enrolled at Howard University, a prestigious institute founded by Howard. Oftentimes, Smith and his roommate, another black nominee named Michael Howard, were the subjects of hazing and physical abuse by the cadets.

Resented by his classmates, Smith lived an isolated lifestyle at West Point, enduring harassment and vandalism.

Smith's enrollment at West Point came to a sudden conclusion in June 1874 when he was deemed deficient in his philosophical studies by his professor and recommended for a formal discharge. Desperate for recourse, Smith met with Secretary of War William W. Belknap to request a re-examination but was refused.