Defense Department Page Honoring Jackie Robinson’s Military Service Scrubbed, ‘DEI’ Added to Web Address
The Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images
A page honoring Jackie Robinson’s military service was removed from the Department of Defense’s website after “DEI” was added to the web address.
Under the directive of President Donald Trump, all branches of the federal government have been working to remove anything involving diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. For the Department of Defense, that seemed to also include parts of the U.S. Military’s history.
Due to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s order to purge online content that highlights diversity initiatives, thousands of photos and articles were removed from the site. That included the iconic photo of the raising of the American flag over Iwo Jima during World War II — which features a Marine of Native American descent — and articles about the Tuskegee Airmen and Women Airforce Service Pilots.
On Tuesday night, it was discovered that the legendary baseball player had been caught in the DEI purge.
“This used to be the URL for a story on the @DeptofDefense website about Jackie Robinson’s time in the Army,” ESPN insider Jeff Passan tweeted late Tuesday night. “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.”
The article featuring Robinson was part of a series of articles called “Sports Heroes Who Served,” and the URLs include the sequence “sports-heroes-who-served” in them. The link provided by Passan, however, redirects to a 404 error page with the URL “deisports-heroes-who-served.”
The old page featured a lengthy article detailing Robinson’s baseball career and military service. It can be accessed on the Internet Archive. At the time of writing, Robinson was only briefly in an article highlighting his teammate Pee Wee Reese.
