Extra: Jackie Robinson: Pioneering Player, Military Freedom Fighter
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This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to Forbidden Fruit, the Forbidden History Podcast Extra. In our last episode, we heard the incredible story of the Black Panthers, the 761st Tank Battalion of World War II.

the first African-American tank unit to see combat. In this episode, we're going to explore the life of a famous Black Panther, Jackie Robinson, who went on to become one of history's greatest baseball players. We're going to explore his monumental work in combating racism throughout his military career and how his efforts would be instrumental in the desegregation of professional baseball.

This is Jackie Robinson, pioneering player, military freedom fighter. Jack Roosevelt Robinson, better known as Jackie, is born on January 31st, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia, to a family of sharecroppers. The youngest of five children, Jackie's family moves to Pasadena, California the following year, where he spends the remainder of his childhood.

At high school, Jackie excels in numerous sports such as football, basketball, track and field, tennis, and baseball, winning awards in all areas. While playing football at Pasadena Junior College, Jackie fractures his ankle, complications from which would eventually impact his military career. Towards the end of his time at school, Jackie's brother, Frank, is killed in a motorcycle accident.

which motivates him to pursue his athletic career at the nearby UCLA to be closer to Frank's family. Jackie becomes UCLA's first athlete to win varsity letters in four sports: baseball, basketball, football, and track. Along with three other Black students, Jackie's 1939 football team becomes the most integrated team of its time.

While at UCLA, Jackie meets his future wife, Rachel, and the pair go on to have three children: Jackie Jr., Sharon, and David. A year after leaving UCLA, he travels to Honolulu and joins their semi-professional, racially integrated football team. After a short-lived season, he returns to California and plays football for the Los Angeles Bulldogs.

His budding professional footballing career ends soon after, however. With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. joins World War II, and Jackie is drafted into the U.S. military. In 1942, Jackie is assigned to a segregated Army Cavalry unit in Fort Riley, Kansas.

Jackie, along with several other Black soldiers, apply for admission to an officer candidate school, and although the program's outlines are drafted as race neutral, they don't admit any Black applicants. After relentless delays and protests from notable figures such as boxer Joe Lewis and assistant civilian aide to the Secretary of War Truman Gibson, the men are finally accepted.

In January 1943, Jackie is commissioned as a second lieutenant and reassigned to Fort Hood, Texas, joining the 761st Tank Battalion, the Black Panthers. It's July 6th, 1944. Jackie has been staying at McCloskey General Hospital in Temple, Texas for just over two weeks and is awaiting on test results.

The ankle that he injured in college has been giving him issues after he aggravated it on an army obstacle course the year prior. While staying at the hospital, Jackie travels back to Fort Hood to visit his friends at the Black Officers Club. He arrives at 7:30 p.m., catches up with his fellow officers, and leaves to return to the hospital at 10 p.m. Jackie boards a shuttle bus at stop number 23.

He heads for the back of the bus, but sees a familiar face sat near the midsection, four rows from the back. It's Virginia Jones, the wife of an officer in the Black Panthers. He sits next to her and they chat between themselves. Five stops later, the bus driver stands up, ordering Jackie to move to the back of the bus. Jackie remains in his seat. The bus driver gets up and staunchly makes his way over to him.

He stands in front of Jackie, fists clenched, and demands for him again to move to the back of the bus. Jackie once again refuses the driver's demands. While Texas law at the time requires African Americans to sit at the back of buses, military bases have a wartime prohibition on this discrimination.

This often causes issues for soldiers of the South, with crossovers such as local bus companies holding transportation contracts with the military, often violating the federal discrimination ban. According to Jackie, the driver evidently resented him for speaking and sitting next to a white woman.

What the driver didn't know, however, was that Virginia, who had fair skin and to many people looked white, was also African American. When they reach the next bus station, the driver gets off the bus, refuses to drive, and reports Jackie to the military police. Many witnesses on the bus also allege that Jackie is at fault.

They get in a heated argument, and the situation turns volatile, with other passengers using racial slurs. The military policemen eventually get involved, and ten officers handcuff Jackie and take him into questioning. He's charged with insubordination, disturbing the peace, drunkenness even though he does not drink alcohol,

insulting a civilian woman, refusing to obey the commands of a superior officer, and conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman. And unfortunately, this is the appalling reality for almost all Black people in the U.S. of this era. Fort Hood has already earned a bleak reputation among Black soldiers. Like all other Southern training camps, it's segregated,

But more than that, African American soldiers are routinely confronted with inferior training, limited access to public transport, racial name-calling, and physical mistreatment, some even being beaten by their white superiors until they could no longer stand. Some at Fort Hood even report their treatment to be worse than the German prisoners of war who also reside there.

who themselves have roomier barracks, recreational facilities, and all in all are better treated. And off base, the situation is even worse. The neighboring towns of Killeen and Temple are extremely inhospitable. Mostly farming communities, these towns are full of staunch racists who are eager to enact their hatred on innocent Black soldiers.

With local laws often mandating strict racial separation, Black officers would frequently find themselves not allowed into restaurants. While they were outside eating cold handouts, they would watch on as German prisoners enjoyed a hot meal inside. For some soldiers, training in the South was as traumatizing as fighting in the war.

Back to his case, Jackie confronts the investigation officer about racist questioning by him and his assistant. In response, the officer suggests Jackie should be court-martialed. Believing these charges to be contrived and racially motivated, Jackie is determined to get the word out on what really happened.

He contacts the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, seeks publicity from the press, and also writes to the War Department's civilian aide. Lieutenant Colonel Bates, battalion commander of the Black Panthers, also does his best to protect Jackie, whom he has nothing but the highest regard for. He refuses to authorize Jackie's court martial order.

Subsequently, Jackie is moved to the 758th Tank Battalion instead, and his new commander immediately signs the order. Lieutenant Colonel Bates puts his career on the line several times following the weeks of the incident, and brings eight members of the Black Panthers before the panel to testify to the unfair treatment they receive regularly on the buses at Fort Hood.

By the time of the hearing on the 2nd of August, the charges have been reduced to two counts of insubordination during the questioning and no longer reference the incident on the bus at all. After four and a half hours, the court acquits Jackie of all charges.

Jackie's lawyer later sums up the proceedings by telling the board that this was not a case involving any violation against any military tradition, but more so a situation in which a few individuals sought to vent their bigotry on a person who was simply exercising his rights as an American and a soldier.

Although Jackie's former unit, the Black Panthers, became the first African American tank unit to see combat in World War II, Jackie's court proceedings prohibit him from being deployed overseas. Along with that, two weeks prior to the hearing, Army doctors had decided his ankle injury was permanent. Jackie asked to be discharged from the Army altogether due to his injury.

He is transferred to Camp Breckenridge in Kentucky while his request is being processed, and it's here that he serves as a coach for Army athletics. While tossing a baseball with a fellow soldier one day, Jackie learns there is good money to be made playing baseball in a network of all-Black professional teams. Jackie is honorably discharged on November 28, 1944.

He writes to the Kansas City Monarchs baseball team, and they sign him soon after. He plays the 1945 season before being poached by the general manager of a major league team, the Brooklyn Dodgers. In the mid-1940s, Major League Baseball has a long-standing unspoken rule to keep baseball white. But Branch Rickey, manager of the Dodgers, is keen to change that.

Looking for the perfect player to break the color barrier, he scouts Jackie. He wants not only a great sportsman, but also someone of impeccable character and firm inner strength. Branch knows that whoever he signs will be subject to racial abuse from fans and opposing players, and in some cities, would even be barred from hotels and restaurants that his fellow players would stay and dine in.

after extensively looking into Jackie's background, including his military career and all it involved. He knows he's found his man. And after a year or so of training, in 1947, Jackie Robinson is the first Black man to play Major League Baseball since 1884.

He has surgery to fix his ankle injury the following year, then goes on to have a successful decade-long career in Major League Baseball. Jackie becomes a huge inspiration for Black athletes across America. His success opens the door for other Black baseball players. In 1962, he's elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

What is so intriguing about Jackie Robinson's life is how different it could have turned out. Would he have gone on to become such a successful, inspirational baseball player if it weren't for his ankle injury making him change discipline? And due to being court-martialed, he missed out on seeing combat in World War II, something that could have cost him his life.

It's soldiers like Jackie Robinson, those who served and those who fought for their rights as Black servicemen, that played a vital role in the fight for freedom and greater rights for Black Americans. Just like Jackie, many crucially worked hard to extend the Army's desegregation measures into wider America during the post-war period, despite how much it may have cost them.

The struggles Jackie faced as a black officer at U.S. military camps in the 1940s drove him to become a pioneer in securing equal rights for black Americans in sports. For both areas required similar qualities: physical and emotional courage, strength of character, and a determination to abolish injustice.

Hello, I'm Violet Manners and welcome to Hidden Heritage,

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We will share the untold and unique stories that celebrate UK heritage, from landmarks, architecture, artefacts to myths and legends. Hidden Heritage will highlight a side of British history you have never seen before. I'm your host, Violet Manners, and founder of HeritageX, and I invite you all to join us on this exciting journey. This is Hidden Heritage. You can find Hidden Heritage wherever you listen to your podcasts.