Webpage detailing Jackie Robinson’s military service removed by Pentagon in latest DEI purge

An article about baseball legend Jackie Robinson and Army soldier has been removed from the Department of Defense website amid the Trump administration’s purge on diversity, equity and inclusion.

The page about Robinson’s military service and baseball career titled “Sports Heroes Who Served: Baseball Great Jackie Robinson Was WWII Soldier,” on the Pentagon website now shows the error message “404 - Page Not Found.”

In the website address, “DEI” has been added to the link, which was not present on the original one, an archived version of the article shows.

ESPN baseball columnist Jeff Passan was among the first to point out that Robinson’s page was taken down. “This used to be the URL for a story on the @DeptofDefense website about Jackie Robinson's time in the Army,” Passan wrote in a post on X. “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.”

Hours after The Independent contacted the Pentagon for comment, press secretary John Ullyot defended the decision in a statement.

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Robinson, a leader of the civil rights movement, is mentioned in an article about teammate Harold Henry “Pee Wee” Reese, which remains on the website but his standalone story is no longer there.

After studying at UCLA, Robinson served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He was court marshaled and “honorably discharged for standing up for his rights and refusing to move to the back of a segregated military bus,” Jackie Robinson Foundation’s biography of the star says on its website.

He then set his sights on playing baseball professionally. He joined the negro leagues before famously breaking baseball’s color barrier in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He went on to become the first African American inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

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The removal of Robinson’s inspirational story follows Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s declaration that “DEI is dead” as he implements Trump’s agenda at the Pentagon.

One of Trump’s many executive orders was banning DEI in federal programs, and Pentagon bosses have carried out orders to remove any content that “promotes” it.

Last week it emerged that Arlington National Cemetery purged dozens of pages of information about famous Black, Hispanic and female veterans from its website.

On the website’s “Notable Graves” dropdown menu, African American History, Hispanic American History and Women’s History no longer appear, screenshots taken by Armed forces outlet Task & Purpose comparing it in December 2024 and now show.

Officials confirmed to the outlet that some pages had been “unpublished.” In a statement to The Independent, an Army spokesperson said it was “working diligently to return removed content” but did not specify when it would return.