March 19 (UPI) — An article detailing baseball icon Jackie Robinson’s military history was removed from the Department of Defense’s website and the term DEI was added to a link for the page.
A spokesman from the Department of Defense told UPI on Wednesday that the agency “will look into” the issue. Neither MLB nor the Jackie Robinson Foundation immediately responded to requests for comment.
The article, titled “Sports Heroes Who Served: Baseball Great Jackie Robinson was WWII Soldier,” was initially published Feb. 9, 2021, and was no longer available Tuesday. It can still be read through archive services. The link for the inactive article now includes the term “DEI Sports Heroes.”
Robinson broke MLB’s color barrier when he suited up for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. He is among the most revered athletes in the history of sports and celebrated annually April 15, with MLB players sporting his iconic No. 42.
Robinson, who died in in 1972 from heart disease at age 53, was drafted and assigned to a segregated Army calvary unit in 1942 in Fort Riley, Kansas, during World War II. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1943. Robinson later joined the 761st “Black Panthers” tank battalion at Fort Hood, Texas.
According to an account from the inactive Department of Defensive webpage, Robinson boarded an Army bus July 1944 and the driver ordered him to “move to the back of the bus, but Robinson refused.”
“The driver called the military police, who took Robinson into custody,” the article said. “He was subsequently court-martialed, but he was acquitted.”
Robison was later transferred to Camp Breckinridge, Ky. He served as a coach for Army athletics until he was honorably discharged in November of 1944.
Robinson started playing for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues in 1945. He made his MLB debut two years later.
The removal of the article about Robinson and addition of DEI to its link comes amid a torrent of moves from the Trump administration to disband diversity, equality and inclusion policies across the country, some of which include layoffs and threats to withhold federal funding from educational institutions.
Several websites were previously taken down, including some highlighting the history of women soldiers. The terms “transgender” and “queer” also were recently removed from a National Park Service website article about the Stonewall National Monument, a park dedicated to LBGTQ+ protests that sparked the gay rights movement 55 years ago.
President Donald Trump announced last month that he planned to honor Robinson and other Black historical figures with statues in a National Garden of American Heroes.
Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr., in addition to Robinson and other athletes, will be among those honored in the garden.
“We’re going to produce some of the most beautiful works of art in the form of a statue for men like Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Jackie Robinson — what a great athlete he was — Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, and the late Kobe Bryant,” Trump said.
