#west point

[caystar13star]

Army is really upping the trash talk for the game today 😂😂

[jdsquared]

[rebelyells]

In Defense of Southern Heritage!

Matt Walsh Defends our Heritage!

[blackfolksintime]

West Point Buffalo Soldiers, 1920s

[princetonarchives]

Tiger Tuesday: The tiger for today's "Tiger Tuesday" is on the drum of a perhaps dejected drummer in Princeton's 1982 Bric-a-Brac. On October 17, 1981, Princeton University Band was not allowed to play at the halftime show for the Princeton-Army football game at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on the basis of what officials said were offensive performances in the prior few years. The band's perspective, as stated here, was that "nothing is sacred." However, the primary critique of the band was its heavy reliance on sexually suggestive humor, and disapproval came from many quarters.

The entire Tiger Tuesday series

[ifelllikeastar]

Captain Colin Kelly was a World War II B-17 Flying Fortress pilot who flew bombing runs against the Japanese navy in the first days after the Pearl Harbor attack. He is remembered as one of the first American heroes of the war after ordering his crew to bail out while he remained at the bomber's controls trying to keep the plane in the air before it exploded, killing him. His was the first American B-17 to be shot down in combat.

* Kelly was with the 14th Bombardment Squadron, 19th Bombardment Group, United States Army Air Corps

Colin Purdie Kelly Jr. died December 10, 1941 at the age of 26.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

We are all guardians of Democracy

The West Point class of 2024 graduated at Michie Stadium yesterday.  President Joe Biden was the graduation speaker.  Biden did not use his speech to the cadets, as presidents have done before him, to announce any new foreign policy doctrines or policy objectives, but rather, as the New York Times reported today, “The president used the moment to suggest a sharp contrast with Mr. Trump.”.

Biden reminded the graduating cadets of their solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution: “On your very first day at West Point, you raised your right hands and took an oath not to a political party, not to a president, but to the Constitution of the United States of America,” Biden told the cadets. “Nothing is guaranteed about our democracy in America,” he added. “Every generation has an obligation to defend it, to protect it, to preserve it, to choose it. Now it’s your turn.”

Biden quoted from a letter written in 2020 by West Point alumni to the graduating class of that year.  The letter was put together by Donna Matturro McAleer, a 1987 graduate of West Point who has spent years working for women’s rights and equal opportunity for women in the military.  I played a role in the letter, reading an early draft and making suggestions, and I was a signatory to the letter, along with 12 members of my class, 1969.

Biden asked the class of 2024 to “Remember what over a thousand graduates of West Point wrote to the Class of 2020 four years ago: The oath you’ve taken here, quote, ‘has no expiration date,’ they said. Not for you, not for your country. It’s important to your nation now as it’s ever been. Keep it, honor it, and live it.”

Donna and I and the more than a thousand West Pointers who signed that letter are proud that it lives on in the words of President Biden’s address to the class of 2024. We wrote, “The oath taken by those who choose to serve in America’s military is aspirational. We pledge service to no monarch; no government; no political party; no tyrant. Your oath is to a set of principles and an ideal expressed in the Constitution and its amendments. Our Constitution establishes freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of religion, of equal protection under the law regardless of race, color, or creed.”

Thank you, President Biden, for reminding us that these words are as true today as when we warned four years ago, “When fellow graduates fail to respect the checks and balances of government, promote individual power above country, or prize loyalty to individuals over the ideals expressed in the Constitution, it is a travesty to their oath of office.”

Especially today, we cannot take for granted our freedom and our commitment to defend it.  West Pointers learn, when necessary, to defend our Constitution with rifles.  But we can all defend it with our votes.  As President Biden told the class of 2024, we are all guardians of Democracy. This is our country. It’s up to us to keep it and honor it.

Lucian Truscott Newsletter

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[drexelfencingclub]

The club did amazing at the U.S. Military Academy Invitation this past weekend!! Earning two bronze medals, our 10 competing fencers killed it!!

[kemetic-dreams]

[libraryofva]

Recent Acquisition - Ephemera Collection

West Point Drive-In Theatre. Sunday, Mar. 29th.

Florence Marie Longest Scrapbook

[pplndplcs]

Princess Harris, 17, sleeps with her son Annointed in West Point. She named him Annointed so he would be blessed after her mother sent her away and the baby’s father refused to recognize the baby as his. Princess dreams of going back to school and becoming a human rights lawyer to fight for women and children’s rights. She sings Annointed lullabies about her hopes for the future.

HANNAH REYES MORALES

[unteriors]

Shoemaker Road, West Point, Georgia.

[jdsquared]

[todaysdocument]

Letter from Lt. Henry O. Flipper to Representative John A. T. Hull Regarding a Bill Introduced to Congress to Reinstate Lt. Flipper into the Army and Restore His Rank

Record Group 233: Records of the U.S. House of Representatives Series: Committee Papers

Henry O. Flipper Member "Association of Civil Engineers of Arizona" Deputy U.S. Mineral Surveyor Consultations on Mexican Land and Mining Laws Notary Public Santa Fe, New Mexico, October 23, 1898. Hon. John A. T. Hull, Desmoines, Iowa. Dear Sir: I send you, in this mail and under separate cover, a printed copy of the Brief I have prepared in my case under Bill, H.R. 9849, which was so kindly introduced in the House for me by the Hon. Michael Griffin, at the last session of Congress. In May last I submitted to you and to the members of the Sub-Committee a type-written copy of a Brief I had hastily prepared in Washington. I have carefully rewritten and revised that Brief and now send you a copy for your perusal and consideration. In coming to Congress with my case, I do so because there is no individual or other tribunal to which I can go, no official or other official body with power to review the case and grant or refuse my petition. In coming to you, to the Committee and the Congress, I do not ask that aught be done for me from motives of mere sympathy and yet I cannot help feeling that all of us can and do sympathize with those who have been wronged. I am sure that, after reading my Brief through, you will understand and appreciate the struggle I made to rise above the station to which I was born, how I won my way through West Point and how I made as honorable a record in the Army as any officer in it, in spite of

J. A. T. H. -2- the isolation, lack of social association, ostracism and what not to which I was subjected by the great majority of my brother officers. You will recognize also the almost barbarous treatment to which I was subjected at the time I was accused and tried. It will not be possible, I apprehend, for you or any member of the Committee to wade through the 1000 or more pages of the record, nor is it necessary, but, if you should do so, you will readily be convinced that the rime of being a Negro was, in my case, far more heinous than deceiving the commanding officer. My utter helplessness and conviction then arose from that cause and without the generous assistance of yourself and the other gentlemen of the Committee, in Committee and on the floor of the House, I shall be equally helpless now. I believe my case is a strong one as well as a meritorious one and one that will commend itself to you for approval and will enlist your sympathy and support. I ask nothing because I am a Negro, yet that fact must press itself upon your consideration as a strong motive for the wrong done me as well as a powerful reason for righting that wrong. I ask only what Congress has seen fit to grant to others similarly situated. I ask only that justice which every American citizen has the right to ask and which Congress alone has the power to grant. In my Brief I offer for your consideration two cases,

one occurring before my trial and of which I should have had the benefit as a precedent, and the other occurring after my trial. They will show you how white officers of long years of experience and of high rank have been treated for the same offense as that for which I was tried and dismissed. I also present six precedents in which Congress has granted to dismissed offers precisely what I am asking. I do not believe Congress ever had before it a case as deserving of favorable action as my case, and for that reason I do not hesitate to appeal to you and to ask you to champion it for me and to see that both the Committee and the House take speedy and favorable action and pass the bill just as Mr. Griffin introduced it without amendment of any character. You will have my gratitude and that of my entire race, as well as the satisfaction of having righted a great wrong done to a member of a harmless but despised and friendless race. Relying upon you, as I do, I have the honor to be, Very truly yours, Henry O. Flipper [handwritten signature]

[floridaboiler]

The Class the Stars Fell On graduated on June 12, 1915.  Of the 164 graduates in West Point’s class of 1915, fifty nine would eventually become generals (including Omar Bradley and Dwight D. Eisenhower), the highest percentage of any class in West Point’s history. Because of all the stars they earned, the class of 1915 is remembered as “The Class the Stars Fell On.”

[the-cricket-chirps]

Winslow Homer

West Point, Prout's Neck

1900

Clark Art Institute Collection