A webpage about baseball legend Jackie Robinson’s military service has been removed from the Pentagon’s website. The page, titled “Sports Heroes Who Served: Baseball Great Jackie Robinson Was WWII Soldier,” is no longer available and shows a “404 – Page Not Found” error.
The webpage’s URL now includes “DEI,” a term not present in the original link, according to an archived version of the article.
ESPN baseball columnist Jeff Passan was one of the first to notice the removal of Robinson’s page. “This used to be the URL for a story on the @DeptofDefense website about Jackie Robinson’s time in the Army,” Passan wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “The story has been removed. The ghouls who did this should be ashamed. Jackie Robinson was the embodiment of an American hero. Fix this now.”
Although Robinson’s story is gone, he is still mentioned in an article about his teammate, Harold Henry “Pee Wee” Reese, which remains on the site.
After attending UCLA, Robinson served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He was court-martialed and “honorably discharged for standing up for his rights and refusing to move to the back of a segregated military bus,” according to the Jackie Robinson Foundation. He later joined the Negro Leagues before famously breaking baseball’s color barrier in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson became the first African American inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The removal of Robinson’s story follows Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s statement that “DEI is dead,” as part of his efforts to enforce President Trump’s agenda at the Pentagon. One of Trump’s executive orders banned DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs in federal agencies, and Pentagon officials have been following orders to remove content promoting DEI.
Last week, it was reported that Arlington National Cemetery had also removed information about famous Black, Hispanic, and female veterans from its website.
The “Notable Graves” section, which previously included categories for African American History, Hispanic American History, and Women’s History, no longer lists these topics. Screenshots taken in December 2024 and now show the changes. An Army spokesperson confirmed some pages were “unpublished,” and the Army is working to restore the content, though no timeline has been given.
