Did you know? On this day in 1944, a U.S. Army soldier who would go on to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball, refused to move to the back of an Army bus, leading to him being court-martialed. In 1942, Robinson was drafted and assigned to a segregated Army cavalry unit in Fort Riley, Kansas. Having the requisite qualifications, Robinson and several other black soldiers applied for admission to an Officer Candidate School (OCS) then located at Fort Riley. Although the Army’s initial July 1941 guidelines for OCS had been drafted as race-neutral, few black applicants were admitted into OCS until after subsequent directives by Army leadership. As a result, the applications of Robinson and his colleagues were delayed for several months.
After protests by heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis (then stationed at Fort Riley) and the help of Truman Gibson (then an assistant civilian aide to the Secretary of War), the men were accepted into OCS. The experience led to a personal friendship between Robinson and Louis. Upon finishing OCS, Robinson was commissioned as a second lieutenant in January 1943.
After receiving his commission, Robinson was reassigned to Fort Hood, Texas, where he joined the 761st “Black Panthers” Tank Battalion. While awaiting results of hospital tests on the ankle he had injured in junior college, Robinson boarded an Army bus with a fellow officer’s wife; although the Army had commissioned its own unsegregated bus line, the bus driver ordered Robinson to move to the back of the bus. Robinson refused. The driver backed down, but after reaching the end of the line, summoned the military police, who took Robinson into custody. When Robinson later confronted the investigating duty officer about racist questioning by the officer and his assistant, the officer recommended Robinson be court-martialed.
After Robinson’s commander in the 761st, Paul L. Bates, refused to authorize the legal action, Robinson was summarily transferred to the 758th Battalion—where the commander quickly consented to charge Robinson with multiple offenses, including, among other charges, public drunkenness, even though Robinson did not drink. By the time of the court-martial in August 1944, the charges against Robinson had been reduced to two counts of insubordination during questioning. Robinson was acquitted by an all-white panel of nine officers. The experiences Robinson was subjected to during the court proceedings would be remembered when he later joined MLB and was subjected to racist attacks.
Although his former unit, the 761st Tank Battalion, became the first black tank unit to see combat in World War II, Robinson’s court-martial proceedings prohibited him from being deployed overseas; thus, he never saw combat action. After his acquittal, he was transferred to Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky, where he served as a coach for army athletics until receiving an honorable discharge in November 1944. While there, Robinson met a former player for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League, who encouraged Robinson to write the Monarchs and ask for a tryout. Robinson took the former player’s advice and wrote to Monarchs’ co-owner Thomas Baird.
Sports Heroes Who Served is a series that highlights the accomplishments of athletes who served in the U.S. military.
Jack Roosevelt Robinson — better known as Jackie Robinson — was born in Cairo, Georgia, on Jan. 31, 1919, the same month former President Theodore Roosevelt died. That’s how he got his middle name.
In 1920, his father, a sharecropper, left the family. Robinson’s mother and her six children moved to Pasadena, California, where she worked a variety of jobs to support the family. But they lived in poverty.
In high school, Robinson played several sports at the varsity level and lettered in four of them: football, basketball, track, and baseball.
In 1936, Robinson won the junior boys singles championship in the annual Pacific Coast Negro Tennis Tournament and he also earned a spot on the Pomona, California, annual baseball tournament’s all-star team, which included future Hall of Famers Ted Williams and Bob Lemon.
After graduating from Pasadena Junior College in 1939, he enrolled at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he became the first UCLA athlete to win varsity letters in four sports: baseball, football, track, and basketball.
During World War II in 1942, Robinson was drafted and assigned to a segregated Army cavalry unit in Fort Riley, Kansas. In January 1943, Robinson has commissioned a second lieutenant.
Robinson was then assigned to Fort Hood, Texas, where he joined the 761st “Black Panthers” tank battalion.
On July 6, 1944, Robinson boarded an Army bus. The driver ordered Robinson to move to the back of the bus, but Robinson refused. The driver called the military police, who took Robinson into custody. He was subsequently court-martialed, but he was acquitted.
After his acquittal, he was transferred to Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky, where he served as a coach for Army athletics until receiving an honorable discharge in November 1944.
In 1945, Robinson began playing baseball for Missouri’s Kansas City Monarchs, one of the teams in the Negro leagues. About that time, Branch Rickey, club president, and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers began to scout the Negro leagues for talent. Rickey selected Robinson from a list of promising Black players and interviewed him for a possible assignment on Brooklyn’s International League farm club, the Montreal Royals.
During the interview, Rickey told Robinson that he’d have to be willing to withstand the inevitable racial abuse that would be directed at him because there were no Black players in Major League Baseball.
Soon after Robinson was on board with the Dodgers, Rickey signed another Black baseball player, Johnny Wright, who happened to be a Navy veteran of World War II.
On April 15, 1947, the Dodgers called Robinson up to the major leagues where he played the first baseman.
Robinson did experience a lot of hatred from fans and other baseball players who felt that Black players should not be allowed in Major League Baseball.
As a Brooklyn Dodger, Robinson was:
- A six-time All-Star from 1949 to 1954.
- A 1955 World Series champion.
- MLB Rookie of the Year in 1947.
Some other interesting facts about the baseball legend include:
- In 1950, Robinson played himself in the movie “The Jackie Robinson Story.”
- On June 4, 1972, the Dodgers retired Robinson’s uniform number, 42.
- On April 15, 1997, No. 42 was retired from all of MLB; Robinson is the only player to receive this honor.
- From 1957 to 1964, Robinson was the vice president for personnel at Chock full o’ Nuts, a coffee brand, making him the first Black person to serve as a vice president of a major U.S. corporation.
Until Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, few Black players made it into baseball history. The first African-American baseball player in MLB was William Edward White, who played for the Providence Grays in 1879 in Providence, Rhode Island. Five years later, Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother, Weldy Walker, played for the Toledo, Ohio, Blue Stockings.
The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) – Full Movie – Described
