Kill the Jellyfish: Jackie Robinson: WWII

"Come Out Fighting..."

The release of "42" a biographical movie about Jackie Robinson is on Friday, April 12th. It will be interesting to see how the producer/ director work to keep the film historically accurate. You may be very familiar with the story of how Jackie broke the color line in Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. But did you know...that in 1942, he was drafted and assigned to a segregated Army cavalry unit and applied for admission (supported by the protests of Heavyweight Boxing Champion Joe Louis) to an Officer Candidate School (OCS) located at Fort Riley, Kansas? After finishing OCS, Robinson was commissioned as a 2^nd Lieutenant and joined the segregated 761st "Black Panthers" Tank Battalion at Fort Hood, Texas.

The Black Panthers

The government used many excuses (eugenics, inexperience, etc.) to delay the deployment of The 761st…but the troops still subjected themselves to hours of excruciating training. On July 6, 1944, a racial incident nearly ended Robinson's military career. While riding on a Ft. Hood Army bus with a friend's wife, the bus driver (who thought the woman was white) ordered Robinson to move to the back of the bus. Robinson refused. The driver called the military police, who arrested Robinson and took him into custody. After a “thorough” investigation Robinson was recommended to be court-martialed. During the court-martial hearing in August 1944, the charges against Robinson were reduced to two counts of insubordination. He was then transferred to Camp Breckenridge, Kentucky, where he coached for the Army until he was honorably discharged in November 1944. Although his former unit, the 761st Tank Battalion, became the first black tank unit to see combat in World War II (Battle of the Bulge, Sigfried Line) under General George Patton, Robinson's court-martial proceedings prohibited him from being deployed overseas and he never saw combat action.