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 Department of Defense’s website as part of the Trump administration’s wiping out of diversity, equity and inclusion within the federal government.
The Pentagon was ordered by Trump 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.”
The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment about the website deletion.
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.
Robinson, whose military service was highlighted on the Army and the Air Forces’ websites, is the latest known Black icon to be included in the purge of websites overseen by the Pentagon.
Another webpage on 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.”
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