I listened to a message about baseball player Jackie Robinson, but I didn’t hear about Robinson when he was the defendant in a lawsuit by the U.S. armed service against him for refusing to move to the back of a military bus when told to do so by the bus driver when. Robinson sat beside a 'white' woman. The woman was wrongfully identified by the bus driver as being white. She was a very fair black woman.
Robinson was told to move and he refused to do so. The bus driver was angry and referred to Robinson as "a nigger." He then had Robinson arrested. The arrest resulted in a court-martial which required six out of nine votes to convict him. It was in 1944 , and discrimination was no longer the law for the military. Robinson was not convicted. His victory preceded the 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing discrimination in public accommodations resulting from the Rosa Parks bus boycott of Birmingham, Alabama. In 1947, Robinson became the first African American to be signed to play baseball in the National Baseball League. |
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