Black Frontiersman is Flipper's autobiographical account of his service with the Tenth U.S. Cavalry in Texas and Oklahoma and his years as a civilian that followed - one of only a handful of such accounts by a black American.
Although Flipper's years on the western frontier have been well documented by historians, this revised and updated volume of Theodore D. Harris' Negro Frontiersman includes a new introduction, expanded endnotes and little known and previously unpublished materials. Flipper's memoirs detail his time spent on the U.S.-Mexican border, his adventures in Sonora and Chihuahua before the Mexican Revolution, his time as an aide to U.S. Senator Albert Bacon Fall, and his later recollections on race and politics in the 1930s. - (Blackwell North Amer)

School Library Journal Reviews

YA?Henry Flipper, the first black West Point graduate, was a prolific writer who left detailed accounts of his life as an army officer, mining engineer, surveyor, and Senate aide. Commissioned in 1877, he was posted out West, where he served for five years as a cavalry officer. There he ran afoul of his commanding officer, was court-martialed, and dismissed from the Army on trumped-up charges. Rather than letting this setback ruin his life, Flipper stayed in the West and worked at a variety of jobs. He was a keen observer and provided detailed descriptions of the people he met and life in the American Southwest from 1870-1910. Harris has taken the best of Flipper's writings and divided them thematically. The selections are easy to read and are enhanced with annotations by the editor about the people Flipper mentioned, the places he visited, and the events in which he played a key role. The end product is a remarkable book of what life was like for a black man in the post-Civil War American West and during the Depression Era.?Robert Burnham, R. E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA