Spratt, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, discovered Smith. "I came across Mr. Smith's case years ago," said Spratt, "in McFeely's excellent biography of Ulysses S. Grant." Spratt said "McFeely devotes a whole chapter to James Webster Smith." McFeely says that "Smith had been spotted in
Columbia by a northern philanthropist, David Clark, as 'a remarkable scholar' of 'excellent character." Smith was carefully selected ---literally hand- picked --- to become the first black to graduate from West Point because of his scholarship and character. Sprat"Smith was no random choice," Spratt said.
Spratt said: "McFeely tells in moving detail how Smith suffered terribly at West Point. From the moment he arrived, he was given the silence treatment from the cadet corps." "He suffered racist slurs and taunts; he had slop poured over him in the night; he had to eat his meals served cold. According to McFeely, one participant in the abuse was the President's own son, Fred Grant, who is alleged to have said: "no black --- he used another derogatory term --- 'will ever graduate from West Point.'" Smith was expelled under extremely suspicious circumstances.
"I am pleased we are about to right this longstanding wrong," said Spratt. "It's an atonement, long overdue, for what James Webster Smith was forced to suffer at West Point."
Smith's commissioning ceremony was slated for 11:00 a.m., Monday, September 22, 1997 at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg.
In late 1997 the army awarded him an officer's commission to at least symbolically right a long standing injustice.
Lieutenant Johnson C. Whittaker
Johnson Whittaker was among the twenty African-Americans to be admitted to West Point. He survived two years before being expelled on trumped up charges.
