“I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannon salute the flag. I know that I am a black man in a white world.” Jackie Robinson Second Lieutenant 761st Tank Battalion and baseball player. Quoth bellow his court martial for being the afore mentioned black man in a white world:
An event on July 6, 1944 derailed Robinson’s military career.[57] While awaiting results of hospital tests on the ankle he had injured in junior college, Robinson boarded an Army bus with a fellow officer’s wife; although the Army had commissioned its own unsegregated bus line, the bus driver ordered Robinson to move to the back of the bus.[58][59][60] Robinson refused. The driver backed down, but after reaching the end of the line, summoned the military police, who took Robinson into custody.[58][61] When Robinson later confronted the investigating duty officer about racist questioning by the officer and his assistant, the officer recommended Robinson be court-martialed.[58][62] After Robinson’s commander in the 761st, Paul L. Bates, refused to authorize the legal action,[63] Robinson was summarily transferred to the 758th Battalion — where the commander quickly consented to charge Robinson with multiple offenses, including, among other charges, public drunkenness, even though Robinson did not drink.[58][64]
By the time of the court-martial in August 1944, the charges against Robinson had been reduced to two counts of insubordination during questioning.[58] Robinson was acquitted by an all-white panel of nine officers.[58] The experiences Robinson was subjected to during the court proceedings would be remembered when he later joined MLB and was subjected to racist attacks.[65] Although his former unit, the 761st Tank Battalion, became the first black tank unit to see combat in World War II, Robinson’s court-martial proceedings prohibited him from being deployed overseas; thus, he never saw combat action.[66]