When Jackie Stepped Up To The Plate

My 4th grader Caleb (alias Chay Danger - another story) had to finish a biography book report this holiday weekend for school tomorrow. The book he chose from school was Jackie Robinson: Baseball's Gallant Fighter by Sam & Beryl Epstein (1974). He knew dad would be stoked he chose a baseball player, especially a Dodger, but I admired the appropriateness of writing about Jackie on the Martin Luther King holiday. Of course everyone knows about Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball, his jersey number 42 being the only retired number for all major league teams, and him working with MLK after baseball to further civil rights. Some of my favorite books about Robinson on my shelf include The Jackie Robinson Reader (edited by Jules Tygiel), 1947: When All Hell Broke Loose in Baseball (by Red Barber) and The Boys of Summer (by Roger Kahn, one of my all-time great reads). And as much as I loved Jackie as a ball player, he is on my RTCBL (the Road To Cooperstown Baseball League, a computer fantasy league that covers baseball history, see link under Other Fields) team, my favorite story about him comes from a period before he played in the Major Leagues.

Jackie Robinson left UCLA in 1941 having been a star in basketball, football, baseball and track. In April of 1942 he was drafted into the army as WWII raged, and was assigned to Fort Riley, Kansas. There he ran through the typical guantlet of racial discrimination: he was restricted to segregated facilities, blocked from playing on the camp baseball team, and barred from Officers' Candidate School. He partnered with boxing champion Joe Louis, also on the base, to voice their grievance and was soon enrolled in OCS. Commissioned as a second lieutenant in January 1943, he waged a campaign to improve conditions for black soldiers. He was soon transfered to a Tank Battalion at Fort Hood, Texas. Jackie stated, "Segregation there was so complete that I even saw outhouses marked White, Colored, and Mexican." On July 6, 1944, at the age of 25, he escorted the light-skinned wife of a fellow black officer back to the base hospital. To do so, they boarded a military bus. Civilian bus lines had their own segragation rules, and just months before in Durham, North Carolina a driver shot and killed a black soldier who had refused to move to the back of the bus. The driver was tried and found not guilty by a civilian jury. The Army began providing its own nonsegregated buses on Southern bases.

Robinson and the lady boarded and sat down at the mid-point of the bus. The driver, seeing a black officer seated in the middle of the bus next to a woman who appeared white, yelled,"Hey, you, sittin' beside that woman, get to the back of the bus." When Jackie ignored him, the driver stopped the bus, went back to Lieutenant Robinson, and demanded he "get to the back of the bus where the colored people belong." When Jackie refused and stood his ground, the driver backed down. But at the end of the line, waiting to transfer to another bus, the driver came back with the two other drivers and a dispatcher who said "Is this the nigger who has been causing you trouble?" An arguement ensued and the military police arrived and Jackie was taken to see the provost marshall. Referred to as the "nigger lieutenant" their statements were taken and another arguement arose regarding inaccuracies of the report. As a result of the event, the camp officials were determined to court-martial Robinson. When his commanding officer refused to endorse the orders, Robinson was transferred to another Tank Battalion whose commander promptly signed. Robinson was charged with insubordination, disturbing the peace, drunkenness, conduct unbecoming an officer, insulting a civilian woman, and refusing to obey the lawful orders of a superior officer.

A decade before Rosa Parks, and only 15 months before being tapped as the man to break baseball's color barrier, Robinson's court-martial was held on August 2, 1944. He was found "not guilty on all specifications and charges" by the nine judges and it stood as another sign of hope for black soldiers in the military. Jackie was honorably discharged in November 1944, signed with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues in the spring of 1945, where Branch Rickey secretly observed him and put him on the short list for "baseball's great experiment." Jackie Robinson's stance on the bus could have cost him his entire career, if he had been court-martialed it is unlikely that he would have been chosen. For the Dodgers Jackie hit .297 in '47, .296 in '48 and .342 in '49, winning the MVP award in the major leagues.