The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson

 

Seventy-five years ago, Jackie Robinson broke major-league baseball’s modern-day color barrier, ushering himself into the history books and helping open the doors for so many more. A few years earlier, while in the U.S. military, Robinson endured a life-altering situation—an unexpected court-martial. If Robinson had been found guilty of any charges from his court-martial, he would have been presented with a dishonorable discharge. With this negative mark, he would certainly have been denied a chance at a major-league baseball career.

In his two-hour TNT movie, The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson, filmmaker Larry Peerce produced a classic. Peerce had experienced several box-office flops in the past, but this 1990 made-for-TV movie was a success. Actor Andre Braugher eloquently portrays a young and intense Jackie Robinson in the film. Two other outstanding performances included veteran thespians Ruby Dee, who plays Jackie’s mother, Mallie, and Bruce Dern, who plays a fictional Dodger scout. The repeat bookend characters that offer the young Robinson advice and support through the movie were J. A. Preston, who plays Wendell Smith and Stan Shaw, the movie’s Joe Louis. Smith was a reporter for the Pittsburgh Courier, one of America’s most influential Black newspapers. Louis, the heavyweight boxing champion, was Robinson’s Army buddy whose fame helped gain Robinson’s acceptance into the Army’s Officer Candidate School.

The film opens with Rachel Isum, played by Kasi Lemmons, chatting with Wendell Smith as she waits for Jack Robinson, one of the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA)’s star athletes, and her love interest. Smith was a former star baseball player who wanted to join the majors but was denied because of the color blockage, so he became a sportswriter after college. He later recommended Robinson as the primary candidate to break baseball’s racial barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The film shows the courtship of Jackie and his girlfriend Rachel, holding hands and walking on the UCLA campus, before their lives changed as part of their remarkable history. The innocence of their love resembled a frozen moment often welcomed in the imagery from a Norman Rockwell painting. We witness their relationship endure uncomfortable discussions when Robinson threatens to drop out of college to help his mother financially. He tells Rachel, also a student at UCLA, that “a colored man with a college degree is still colored.” Robinson’s mother (Dee) had a limited but powerful voice in the film, as she tells her son she works hard for him to be able to enjoy the benefit of a college education. The creative license in the film presents Robinson being drafted while still an enrolled student as mother and Rachel wished. According to historical accounts, Robinson dropped out of school and was then drafted into the Army.1 The romance of Jackie and Rachel is again compromised when Rachel joins the Cadet Nurse Corps. She returns Jackie’s engagement ring after his disapproval of her cadet service commitment. The U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps was established in 1943 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to help ease the nursing shortage during the World War II years. The pair is later reunited before Robinson returns to Ft. Riley from leave.

While at Ft. Riley, Lt. Robinson, now the morale officer for colored troops, had a strong will for insisting on fairness for Black soldiers under his command. Robinson got involved when Black soldiers complained to him about their inability to receive adequate service and seating at the mess hall. During his tenure at Ft. Riley, Robinson quits the football team after not being permitted to play in some games because of racial restrictions. Because of Robinson’s defiance he is sent to Camp Hood. Upon receiving his transfer orders, he talks to Joe Louis about the unfair transfer. One of Jackie’s and Joe’s best movie moments comes when Louis tells an irritated Robinson about the reality of the south and when to fight as a Black man. “Just because you’re an officer and a gentleman … you can’t just walk into the club.”2 He lands at Camp Hood, known as one of the Army’s most racist environments and the worst place for a Black soldier. Robinson is initially labeled as troublemaker hours after arriving on the Texas base, but still he is assigned as the tank commander for the Black soldiers.

In the film, The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson, before Army Lieutenant Jack Roosevelt Robinson stepped on the bus that served as the stage for this important event, a fellow Black officer, Lt. Gordon Jones, welcomed him. Lieutenant Jones introduced Robinson to his wife, Loretta, as played by Nancy Cheryl Davis. After his courteous acknowledgment, Robinson walked on the bus and sat next to Lt. Jones’ spouse, Loretta, in the middle section of the bus. There may have been a cause for alarm as Mrs. Jones was a fair-skinned Black woman often mistaken for being White.3 In the Turner Network Television (TNT) movie, Lt. Jones, played by Peter Parros, mentioned that he had to secure off-base housing because many thought the Joneses were an interracial couple.

In reality, on July 7, 1944, Lieutenant Robinson caught the Southwestern Bus Company bus operated on the Texas Army Base-Camp Hood. Robinson sat in the middle of the bus with Mrs. Jones. After a few blocks, the bus driver stopped and told Robinson to go to the back of the bus. When he refused, that was the beginning of problems for the young lieutenant. It was alleged that Lt. Robinson was unruly— a code for Black people stepping out of place when they reject the southern White value system. With no regard for Robinson’s officer insignia, the driver told the dispatcher, “There’s the n____ that’s been causing the trouble.”4 The lieutenant reminded the driver about the Army regulation against separation on Army buses during the ride. Robinson was aware that the War Department was finalizing a transportation order stating that race would not be a factor on military installations.

At the Texas base, desegregation of buses was a post regulation, but Jim Crow transportation laws still held their strength even on bases.5 It was the customary practice that bus drivers made Blacks go to the back of the buses. Like slave patrols that retrieved runaway slaves in the 1830s, bus drivers were designated as special policeman and had the power to arrest Black passengers.6 “All states gave the white man who operated these vehicles the power to determine when, where, and whether any Black person could secure a seat on their buses.”7 Jackie Robinson was not the first Black person to be humiliated for refusing to move to the back of the bus, but he was the first known Negro officer to be court-martialed because of his defiance.

For years Blacks had wrestled with the restrictions of travel on buses. In Texas and throughout the south, Black passengers were banned from riding if that made White patrons uncomfortable. “By 1929 Black residents of Austin and several other Texas cities were petitioning the Texas Railroad Commission to require all holders of bus company certificates to transport Negroes on their lines.”8 W.H. Mitchell, a Black man, was arrested for attempting to board a Houston bus in 1925.9 “Likewise, in Portsmouth, Virginia colored people were barred from riding on the bus lines.”10

According to Mia Bay’s (2021) book, Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance, it was logical for Blacks to be positioned to the back of the bus following Jim Crow attitudes of “separate but equal.”11 But, seating in the back of the bus was far from equal. Lyman Johnson, a civil rights activist, commented, “Every time we hit a pothole; in the road … the people in the back were bumped up and down. It was rough as riding an old mule. These undesirable rear seats, which might have otherwise been difficult to fill, were assigned to Blacks passengers, often noticed and resented. I didn’t like having to pass empty seats in the front to go to colored seats in the back.”12 Georgia and South Carolina had the unique idea of establishing real segregated seating for colored passengers, by having them facing backward and having Whites facing forward. Many of the Black patrons’ bodies flung back as they suffered from motion sickness and swallowed the exhaust of the smoky bus fumes.13 At the turn of the century and during WWI, Jim Crow policies strengthened public transportation segregation in America’s southern states. “More than four hundred state laws, constitutional amendments, and city ordinances legalizing segregation and discrimination were passed in the United States between 1865 and 1967. Several states even prohibited hearses from carrying both races. Even the dead could not be transported equally.”14

The bus policies in southern states were strictly enforced even after Jackie Robinson began his Hall of Fame career as a professional baseball player. In March 1955, shortly after a young minister, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., moved to Montgomery, a 15-year-old girl refused to give up her seat. The arrest of the young Claudette Colvin fueled the fire for another more mature rider by the name of Rosa Parks. Parks’ arrest resulted in launching a national civil rights movement known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. “The inaction of the city and bus officials after the Colvin case would make it necessary for them in a few months to meet another committee, infinitely, more determined.”15 Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, presented America with the “separate but equal” doctrine. Yet, the Montgomery Bus Boycott was an economic challenge as it altered segregationally travel practices against Montgomery’s Black citizens-the bus company’s most loyal patrons.

Even Black soldiers dressed in their uniforms shared the heavy burden of second-class citizenship concerning the segregated transportation laws. In 1944, Corporal John W. Childs took a bus from Macon to Savannah, Georgia, and was forced to wait for over an hour to ensure no other White passengers needed his seat.16 In 1942, “a Black soldier was shot and killed in Mobile, Alabama, by a white bus driver, while Texas police shot at least two others for riding in the white section of the bus.”17 According to unfair bus segregation rules, Black women, men, soldiers, or citizens were not treated any differently.

Private Sarah Keys, a Women’s Army Corps (WAC) member, got leave from Ft. Dix, New Jersey, and hopped a bus home to North Carolina on August 1, 1952. Around midnight, the bus stopped in North Carolina, and a new bus driver took over. Before the beginning of the trip, the driver started re-ticketing the passengers. He awoke the young 22-year-old Keys and told her to move to the back of the bus.18 She was to give up her seat for a White marine, but she refused. Private Keys was arrested and escorted to the police station. Keys’ action was not well-known, but she helped to fuel the fight for bus travel a few years before the Montgomery Bus Boycott ignited by the fire from Rosa Parks. In the court case Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company that was settled in 1955, the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled in favor of Keys. The Interstate Commerce Act “outlawed the segregation of Black passengers in buses traveling across state lines.”19

When Jackie Robinson refused to move to the back of bus, it infused a hunger within him. Like other Black patrons, he wanted to be respected and not dismissed as a human being. It was noted when the bus driver called Lt. Robinson a n____, Robinson became enraged, and several Whites began to gather near the upset Lieutenant. The driver, supported by a crowd of White citizens, demanded action against the angered Robinson.20 Because of Robinson’s uneasiness about the volatile circumstance he faced, and possible court-martial, he wrote Truman K. Gibson, the Assistant to the Secretary of War. A few days after Robinson sent the letter to Gibson’s attention, a court-martial charge sheet was produced at Camp Hood on July 17, 1944. The first of three charges against Lt. Robinson was the Violation of the 63rd Article of War. The charge was that Lt. Robinson had disrespected Captain Peeler L. Wigginton, his superior officer, after dramatically mentioning his problem with a White soldier. Peeler alleged that Robinson said, “Captain, any Private, you, or any General calls me a n____ and I’ll break them in two.” Wigginton said the colored lieutenant, spoke to him in an “insolent, impertinent and rude manner.”21 There were over a dozen negative sworn statements gathered on July 7 and 8 that reflected poorly on Lt. Robinson’s conduct—which set up grounds for his court-martial.

After Gibson received Lt. Robinson’s letter, he advanced it to the chain of command with a written note, ”this man is the well-known athlete.”22 Jackie Robinson a former University of California-Los Angeles star, was one of the best athletes in the country. As a four-sport athlete, Jackie was denied an opportunity to run track like his brother, Mack, when the 1940 Olympics were cancelled because of the war.23 Robinson was one of the football stars on UCLA’s 1939 backfield known as the “Gold Dust Trio.” One of Jackie’s famous “Gold Dust Trio” teammates was Woody Strode, who played professional football after WWII and became an actor. One of his prominent roles was as the title character in the film Sergeant Rutledge, about a fictional Black soldier who endured an Army court-martial trial.

In front of 98,000 fans, Robinson scored a touchdown in the College All-Star Football game against the Chicago Bears.24 The Bears, a professional football team, were impressed with Robinson’s ability. Only a few Blacks played in the early professional football league that started in 1920, but they were reduced to performing on minor-league teams. The football league did not have an open-door policy for admitting Black players, but started adding more to their roster when baseball began integrating.25 Robinson played in a few games for the integrated Pacific Coast Football League before entering the service in 1941. In 1943, while stationed at Fort Riley, Robinson tried to join the camp’s baseball team, but the officer in charge had proclaimed, “I’ll break up the team before I’ll have a n____ on it.”26

In 1944, the war was still in full swing. Robinson, a young second lieutenant, was the commander of Company B, 761st Tank Battalion, as part of the World War II effort. Like several thousand other Negro troops, he was restricted from direct combat duties. Even though Black soldiers had fought in the Revolutionary and the Civil War, White Americans discounted their service.27 Whites openly questioned the Negro communities’ commitment to American patriotism. In 1942, John J. McCloy, the Assistant Secretary of War referenced “an alarmingly large percentage of Negroes in and out of the army who do not seem to be vitally concerned with winning the war. If the United States does not win this war, the lot of the Negro is going to be far, far worse that it is today.”28 Contrary to the opinions of McCloy and many Whites, the African-American population wanted to solve two problems: one against war aggression in Europe and the other against racism in America. Jackie said, “I was in two wars, one against a foreign enemy, the other against prejudice at home.”29

One of the rare sights in the military in 1940 was Black officers. The Army had only five regular Black officers, and three were chaplains.30 The Navy still did not have any Black officers until 1944, when they commissioned 13 Black officers known as the “Golden Thirteen.” Henry L. Stinson, the Secretary of War, believed that Blacks should not be placed in leadership roles and integration would destroy morale in the service.31 Jackie Robinson, a college man with a few credits short of completion from UCLA, told Joe Louis that he and several other African American men were not allowed into the Officer Candidate School (OCS). The boxing champion contacted Washington attorney Truman K. Gibson who had connections with the Secretary of War.32 Shortly, after the call, Robinson and other Black soldiers were admitted into OCS class at Fort Riley.

An Army-appointed lawyer led Robinson’s court-martial defense. Lt. William Cline was played by actor Daniel Stern in the film. Cline’s “cross-examination of the prosecution’s witnesses exposed the racist undertones of Robinson’s arrest. For example, one corporal who took the stand admitted that he heard Private Mucklerath—a key prosecution witness—refer to Robinson with a racial epithet at the MP headquarters.”33 The trial’s duration was over four hours, with Robinson testifying in his own defense. One of the strong character witnesses for the defense was Lt. Colonel Paul L. Bates, Robinson’s commanding officer. Lt. Col. Bates praise of Robinson’s leadership skills was so overwhelming that the court directed Bates to answer only questions pertaining to the arrest. From the beginning, Colonel Bates of the 761st Tank Battalion refused to issue court-martial charges against Robinson. The post commander ordered that Robinson be transferred to the 758th Tank Battalion to support the trumped-up charges, and the new commander signed the court-martial orders.34

Throughout the movie, it is easy to see Robinson’s courage as he fought against the poisonous venom of racial prejudice. Robinson would emerge as one of America’s pioneers in baseball and civil rights in later years. Robinson hurdled over bad episodes during his service experience, but it prepared him for a nasty climate, courtesy of an angry segment of White society and baseball.35

Jackie’s wife, Rachel Robinson, said the 1990 movie was “not a documentary about baseball or Robinson’s athletic career (but) about a man who refused to accept what he knew was wrong, both legally and morally, and fought against the prejudices of a Jim Crow atmosphere.”36

Dr. Cornel West, a philosopher and Black intellectual, wrote the introduction of the 1995 edition of Jackie Robinson’s autobiography, I Never Had It Made. Dr. West writes “more even than ether Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, or Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights movement, Jackie Robinson graphically symbolized and personified the challenge to a vicious legacy and ideology of white supremacy in American history.”37 In the book, Robinson adds that “the Army had barred this type of segregation. The incident was an attempt to frame me.”38

In 1945, a few months after being cleared of an Army court-martial, Robinson signed a baseball contract with the Montreal Royals while proudly sporting his military uniform.

DR. MILBERT O. BROWN JR. is a multi-talented storyteller. During his career, he has captured the historical and cultural tapestry of the Black community using his gifts as an artist, photojournalist, and writer. Currently, Dr. Brown produces independent creative projects as the principal consultant of Brown Images. Brown’s interest in the Negro Leagues began in the 1990s when he interviewed and photographed several Negro League players. Earlier in his distinguished journalism career, Brown worked as an editor and photojournalist at the Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune. At the Tribune, Brown shared journalism’s highest honor — the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for Explanatory Reporting — as a contributing staff member in 2001. The Indiana native graduated from Morgan State University with a Doctorate in Higher Education Leadership. Brown also earned a Master of Arts degree from Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication and a B.S. in Journalism from Ball State University.

 

Notes

1 Laura Smith, “Jackie Robinson was once humiliated and court-martialed for sitting next to a Black woman people thought was white,” Timeline.com, March 21, 2018. Retrieved from: https://timeline.com/jackie-robinson-wouldnt-go-to-the-back-of-the-bus-bd637b346c3f

2 Kenneth Clark, “Double jeopardy: Movie recounts ballplayer’s fight with racism,” Chicago Tribune October 8, 1990: A7.

3 James Endrst, “Trial of a hero chronicles on TV a nation’s shame,” Hartford Courant. October 15, 1990: B1.

4 Michael Lee Lanning, The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson (Lanham, Maryland: Stackpole Books, 2020), 50.

5 Lanning, 50.

6 Mia Bay, Traveling Black: A story of race and resistance (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2021), 154.

7 Pauli Murray, States’ Laws on Race and Color (Athens, Georgia: University Press of Georgia, 1997). Also see Bay, 154.

8 “Ask for an Interpretation of Jim Crow Law,” Brownsville (Texas) Herald, January 14, 1929: 13. Also see Bay, 165.

9 “Attempts to Ride Jim Crow Bus, Arrested,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 28, 1925. Also see Bay, 165.

10 Bay, 165.

11 Bay, 165.

12 Bay, 165.

13 Bay, 165.

14 Marc Brenman, “Transportation Inequity in the United States: A Historical Overview,” American Bar Association, July 1, 2007. Retrieved from: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/human_rights_vol34_2007/summer2007/hr_summer07_brenma/

15 Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride toward freedom: The Montgomery Story (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958). 27.

16 Bay, 169.

17 Catherine Barnes, Journey from Jim Crow (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984: 40; “Soldier near death in Texas for riding in white section of bus,” Chicago Defender, August 8, 1942.

18 “August 1, 1952: Sarah Keys refused to give up her seat on a bus.” Zinn Education Project. Retrieved from: https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/sarah-keys-bus

19 Zinn, 1.

20 Lanning, 51.

21 Lanning, 176.

22 Lanning, 209.

23 J. M. Casper, “Lieutenant Jackie Robinson, Morale Officer, United States Army,”, Jackie Perspectives on 42 (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, 2021), 51-60.

24 Casper, 51.

25 Bob Gill and Tod Maher, “Not only the ball was brown: Black players in minor league football, 1933-46. Professional Football Researchers Association, The Coffin Corner: Vol.11, No.5. 1989. Retrieved January 31, 2022. https://profootballresearchers.com/archives/Website_Files/Coffin_Corner/11-05-384.pdf

26 Lanning, 33.

27 Lanning, 32.

28 Lanning, 33.

29 Lanning, 33.

30 Lanning, 32.

31 Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson: A Biography (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998).

32 Lanning, 37.

33 “The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson,” The Faculty Lounge: Conversations about law, culture, and academic July 6, 2018. Retrieved from: https://www.thefacultylounge.org/2018/07/the-court-martial-ofjackie-robinson.html

34 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anthony Walton, Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII’s Forgotten Heroes (New York: Broadway Books, 2004), 57.

35 Casper, 51.

36 Shav Glick. “Jackie Robinson’s Verdict of Honor. Los Angeles Times. October 14, 1990: 3.

37 Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “Was Jackie Robinson Court-Martialed?” PBS.org, Retrieved from: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/was-jackie-robinson-court-martialed/

38 Rick Du Brow, “Jackie Robinson vs. Another Racial Barrier,” Los Angeles Times, June 19, 1990: F7.