The military story of Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball after serving as a 2nd lieutenant in the Army, no longer exists on the Defense Department’s website as part of the Trump administration’s wiping out of diversity, equity and inclusion within the federal government.
Trump ordered the Pentagon to scan federal websites for articles, social media posts, photos, news articles and videos to remove any web pages that “promote diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Several websites under Pentagon jurisdiction have removed thousands of pages documenting the history of people of color, LGBTQ people, women and others from marginalized backgrounds and their contributions to the American military. Multiple pages about Robinson were taken down, including a page about Negro League players talking about serving in the military. But as of Wednesday afternoon, at least one page about Robinson, in a series about athletes who served in the military, had been reinstated.
“As Secretary Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department," Pentagon press secretary John Ullyot said Wednesday in a statement. "Discriminatory Equity Ideology is a form of Woke cultural Marxism that has no place in our military. It Divides the force, Erodes unit cohesion and Interferes with the services’ core warfighting mission. We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms. In the rare cases that content is removed — either deliberately or by mistake — that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct the components and they correct the content accordingly.”
Robinson trained as an officer and was assigned to a tank regiment, but he still had to deal with harassment and the overall policy of segregation in the U.S. military. He faced a court-martial for refusing to sit in the back of a bus while at Fort Hood in Texas, according to Military.com. Though he was found not guilty of the six counts, including insubordination, the court-martial prevented him from deploying to fight in Europe with his battalion.
David Robinson, the son of Jackie and Rachel Robinson, said in a statement Wednesday evening that he was surprised that the government would remove a web page about athletes who served in the military.
"We take great pride in Jackie Robinson’s service to our country as a soldier and a sports hero, an icon whose courage, talent, strength of character and dedication contributed greatly to leveling the playing field not only in professional sports but throughout society," said Robinson, who is a Jackie Robinson Foundation board member. "He worked tirelessly on behalf of equal opportunities, in education, business, civic engagement, and within the justice system. A recipient of both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, he of course is an American hero.”
Robinson is just one Black icon included in the purge of websites overseen by the department. A webpage about Medgar Evers, a civil rights activist and World War II veteran, was erased from Arlington Cemetery’s website.
Trump called Evers, who was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom last year, a “great American hero” at the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in 2017.
“In Arlington, he lies beside men and women of all races, backgrounds and walks of life who have served and sacrificed for our country,” Trump said. “Their headstones do not mark the color of their skin, but immortalize the courage of their deeds.”
Likewise, last month, Trump announced that Robinson and other Black figures would be honored in a planned National Garden of Heroes.
Since Trump’s executive order on DEI last month, thousands of acknowledgements of contributions by women and minority groups have been taken down, an effort that Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell supported at a briefing Monday.
“I think the president and the secretary have been very clear on this — that anybody that says in the Department of Defense that diversity is our strength is, frankly, incorrect,” Parnell said. “Our shared purpose and unity are our strength. And I say this as somebody who led a combat platoon in Afghanistan that was probably the most diverse platoon that you could possibly imagine.”
