Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson
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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.
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.
Michael Lee Lanning, who graduated from Texas A&M, served more than twenty years in the U.S. Army, retiring as a lieutenant colonel with the Senior Parachute Badge, Combat Infantryman’s Badge, Ranger Tab, and Bronze Star. In Vietnam he commanded an infantry platoon, a recon platoon, and a rifle company. His military career included service as public-affairs officer for Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf and similar work in the Department of Defense Public Affairs office. He has spoken at conferences on the African-American Soldier at the D-Day Museum and Tuskegee University and has appeared on NPR, CBS, and the History Channel.
He has written twenty-four nonfiction books on military history, sports, and health, with more than 1.1 million copies of his books in print in fifteen countries and twelve languages. His previous books include the classic Vietnam, 1969-1970: A Company Commander’s Journal, which the New York Times called “one of the most honest and horrifying accounts of a combat soldier’s life to come out of the Vietnam War.”
A native of Texas, Lanning lives in Lampasas, Texas, just west of Fort Hood.
He has written twenty-four nonfiction books on military history, sports, and health, with more than 1.1 million copies of his books in print in fifteen countries and twelve languages. His previous books include the classic Vietnam, 1969-1970: A Company Commander’s Journal, which the New York Times called “one of the most honest and horrifying accounts of a combat soldier’s life to come out of the Vietnam War.”
A native of Texas, Lanning lives in Lampasas, Texas, just west of Fort Hood.