The Defense Department deleted an article Wednesday about the military service of Jackie Robinson, the first Black player in Major League Baseball, and later restored its URL.
Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier in a start for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, was drafted during World War II, joined the 761st “Black Panthers” tank battalion and didn’t see combat, as related on the Defense Department web page.
Robinson was court-martialed after refusing to sit at the back of an Army bus in 1944, though he was acquitted. He then served as a coach for Army athletes and was honorably discharged later that year.
Initially, Pentagon press secretary John Ullyot told ESPN when asked about the article’s deletion that “DEI is dead at the Defense Department. Discriminatory equity ideology is a form of woke cultural Marxism that has no place in our military. … We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms.”
Robinson’s son David Robinson, a board member of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, told The Associated Press, “We were surprised to learn that a page on the Department of Defense’s website featuring Jackie Robinson among sports heroes who served in the military was taken down. … A recipient of both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, he of course is an American hero.”
In a Jan. 18, 2021, executive order and at a Black History Month reception at the White House on Feb. 20, President Donald Trump called for adding statues of Robinson and other Black historical figures to his proposed National Garden of American Heroes.
“We’re going to produce some of the most beautiful works of art in the form of a statue from men like … Jackie Robinson. What a great athlete he was. Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, he was not a bad athlete. What do you think, Muhammad, not too bad. And the late Kobe Bryant. … Not simply because they’re Black heroes, but also because they are truly American heroes who inspire all of us very much so,” Mr. Trump said at the Feb. 20 event.
After the Robinson web page was reinstated, Mr. Ullyot told ESPN, “Everyone at the Defense Department loves Jackie Robinson, as well as the Navajo Code Talkers, the Tuskegee airmen, the Marines at Iwo Jima and so many others. We salute them for their strong and in many cases heroic service to our country, full stop.”
Mr. Ullyot also said in both statements that when content is removed outside the scope of the Defense Department’s directive against DEI, corrections are made to recognize “our heroes for their dedicated service alongside their fellow Americans.”
