Army Chaplain Honored 111
Years Later  
By Mary Wells
WI Staff Writer
Thursday, July 21, 2005

Henry Vinton Plummer, the first African American chaplain in the Army, was dishonorably discharged in 1894 after being falsely accused of drinking with enlisted men and swearing in front of a woman. This year, the Army vindicated him and erased the dishonorable discharge after a protracted fight by his descendants.

The Army presented the certificate representing an honorable discharge to Plummer’s descendants at ceremonies held at Harmony Memorial Park Cemetery in Landover, MD on July


Photo by Steven M. Cummings
Grave marker of Chaplain Henry V. Plummer showing appropriate dates of his career with the Buffalo Soldiers; date of service with the Navy and date of honorable discharge from the Army, which overturns the dishonorable discharge he received 111 years earlier.

3 rd. The fight was led by the Rev. Jerome Fowler, a great nephew; Olga Plummer-Talley, a great granddaughter, and the Committee to Clear Chaplain Plummer.

“This is the most emotional time I have ever been in my life. It was overwhelming,” Plummer-Talley said. She was also presented the American flag at the ceremony which was held on a hot sweltering day under a canopy at the cemetery where Plummer is buried.

Earlier this year, the Army Board for the Correction of Military Records concluded that racism was the dominant factor in the events leading up to Plummer’s court martial in 1894 and discharge from the military.

Plummer, who was a slave at the Riverdale mansion in Riverdale , MD , then at a plantation in Ellicott , MD , escaped when he was 17. He ran away to find his father, who was living as a free slave living in what is now Washington, D. C. The young Plummer then joined the Navy and was honorably discharged.

The next year, he went to New Orleans to find his sister, Sarah, who had been sold in slavery in 1860 by her Maryland slave masters. Plummer returned with Sarah, who had become very religious. She later started St. Paul Baptist Church in Bladensburg , MD.

After serving as a pastor, himself, Plummer applied to become an Army chaplain in 1864. He was accepted after turning in letters of recommendation from such as luminaries as Frederick Douglass. The Army assigned Plummer to minister to the 9 th U. S. Calvary, the Buffalo Soldiers who were deployed to Kansas , Wyoming and Nebraska . Plummer was the first Black man appointed to serve as a chaplain in the U. S. Army.

According to his children, the White chaplains, who were officers in the Army, were jealous of his popularity with the Black Army men and envied the fact that his Sunday services were well attended. They later perpetrated trumped up charges against him and had him dishonorably discharged from the Army. A disappointed Plummer tried for years to get the charges overturned and his honorable service reinstated, but to no avail.

Plummer spent the last 10 years of his life writing letters to U.S. Presidents and Army officials in an attempt to get the dishonorable discharge overturned. He died without the favorable discharge being reinstated.

More than 100 years later, an appeal to Plummer’s case was brought to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records, by The Committee to Clear Chaplain Plummer, Inc. on February 18, 2004. The Committee is led by Fowler, Plummer’s great nephew, and a great granddaughter, Plummer-Talley.

“It is important to share the remarkable story of not just one, but of all the men and women in history who gave of themselves for the strength and endurance of the United States of America ,” Fowler said at the ceremony.

“His story was lost to history, but not anymore,” said Teri Plummer-McClure, great-great-granddaughter. “Our children don’t learn about Buffalo Soldiers and Chaplain Plummer in our schools. My daughters, Morgan, 12, and Kristin, 10, will remember they were part of history in the making,” Plummer-McClure said.

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