On July 25, 1998; through years of lonely mistreatment, Johnson C. Whittaker kept faith with the promise of America. America kept faith with Johnson C. Whittaker, awarding an army commission to the Detroit-based descendants of the black West Pointer.

The commission, a pair of gold lieutenant's bars and a presidential scroll, came 115 years after Whittaker had been denied them because of charges that were later determined to have been false.

"We cannot undo history," President Clinton said during a White House ceremony."But today finally we can pay tribute to a great American. . . and correct a great injustice."

Whittaker was born a slave in South Carolina in 1858 and was one of the first blacks to enter the U.S. Military Academy. Letters home and notes he made in his Bible show he was shunned by most of his fellow cadets for four years.

When he was found beaten and slashed in his room, Whittaker was charged with fabricating the assault and ultimately dismissed from the academy.

Whittaker became a lawyer, a high school principal and a professor at what is now South Carolina State University. He never spoke of his ordeal, said 77-year-old Cecil Whittaker Pequette, his oldest living descendant, to "keep his children from bitterness." Whittaker died in 1931.

His story was preserved by a daughter-in-law- and handed down through the women of the family, said Pequette, a former school board member and co-publisher of the weekly Detroit Tribune who relocated to Los Angeles.

Enter John Marszalek, a history professor at Mississippi State University, who came across Whittaker's case some 20 years ago while researching the papers of William T. Sherman, the Army's commanding general in Whittaker's day. His research shredded the charges and led to an HBO movie, Assault at West Point, last year.

Sen. Ernest F. Hollings, D-S.C., took it from there, getting a special resolution through Congress, with the help of penitent Army officials.

Meanwhile, three generations of Whittaker descendants awakened the deferred dream. Two sons were officers during World War I, a grandson flew with the famed Tuskegee Airmen and two great-grandsons, Detroit attorney Ulysses Whittaker Boykin and Dr. John Whittaker Sr., chairman of the surgery department at Detroit Mercy Hospital, also served.

The family, Dr. Whittaker said, was grateful for Monday's ceremony July 25, 1998, because it showed America is "willing to face up to its wrongs." His cousin, Ulysses Boykin, agreed, but had another thought, too. The ceremony was important, he said, because it recalled a "life worth remembering." To show what he meant, Boykin quoted from notes his great-grandfather made on the flyleaf of his Bible during his lonely West Point years.

"Try never to injure another by word or by act or by look, even,Forgive as soon as you are injured, and forget as soon as you forgive"

J.C.Whittaker had written.

The Army, Boykin concluded, had waited 115 years to commission a "most extraordinary soldier." Whittaker was awarded his commission posthumously (Moniz, "Cadet Honored").

The first to survive the full four years was Henry Flipper of Georgia. Only two other cadets managed to graduate by 1900.

The first black american graduate of West Point in 1873 was Henry O. Flipper. This Cadet was ostracized by all the white cadets. Cadet Flipper studied very hard and graduated 50th in a class of 76 cadets.

Upon graduation, Lieutenant Flipper was commissioned and assigned to the regular U.S. Army, 10th Cavalry (Buffalo Soldiers), Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Lt. Flipper's commander at Fort Davis, Texas, accused Flipper of failing to account properly for commissary money entrusted to him. A general court marshall acquited Flipper but he was convicted of conduct unbecoming of an .

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