Pentagon defends removing webpage of MLB’s color-barrier breaker Jackie Robinson: ‘DEI is dead at the Defense Department’

The Pentagon has defended removing a webpage about legendary baseball player and civil rights leader Jackie Robinson by proclaiming “DEI is dead.”

After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, Robinson famously broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

An article about Robinson’s inspiring story titled “Sports Heroes Who Served: Baseball Great Jackie Robinson Was WWII Soldier” no longer exists on the Department of Defense website.

Pentagon press secretary John Ullyot defended the move in a statement to The Independent.

“As Secretary Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department. Discriminatory Equity Ideology is a form of Woke cultural Marxism that has no place in our military,” Ullyot said. “It Divides the force, Erodes unit cohesion and Interferes with the services’ core warfighting mission. We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms.”

Ullyot did not confirm whether the page had been taken down deliberately as part of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning DEI in federal programs but added: “In the rare cases that content is removed -- either deliberately or by mistake -- that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct the components and they correct the content accordingly.”

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The page about Robinson’s military service and baseball career 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 In the website address, “DEI” has been added to the link, which was not present on the original one, an archived version of the article shows.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.”

Robinson 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 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.

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He then set his sights on playing baseball professionally. He joined the negro leagues before 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.

Pentagon bosses have carried out orders to remove any content that “promotes” DEI, per Trump’s executive order.

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.