Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson: The Baseball Legend's Battle for Civil Rights during World War II

By: Michael Lee Lanning

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Synopsis: Eleven years before Rosa Parks resisted going to the back of the bus, a young black second lieutenant, hungry to fight Nazis in Europe, refused to move to the back of a U.S. Army bus in Texas and found himself court-martialed. The defiant soldier was Jack Roosevelt Robinson, already in 1944 a celebrated athlete in track and football and in a few years the man who would break Major League Baseball&’s color barrier. This was the pivotal moment in Jackie Robinson&’s pre-MLB career. Had he been found guilty, he would not have been the man who broke baseball&’s color barrier. Had the incident never happened, he would&’ve gone overseas with the Black Panther tank battalion—and who knows what after that. Having survived this crucible of unjust prosecution as an American soldier, Robinson—already a talented multisport athlete—became the ideal player to integrate baseball.This is a dramatic story, deeply engaging and enraging. It&’s a Jackie Robinson story and a baseball story, but it is also an army story as well as an American story.