Page 6 - Jackie Robinson: Patriot

“

I applied for Officers’ Candidate School. It was then I received my first lesson

about the fate of the black man in a Jim Crow Army. … The men in our unit

had passed all the tests for OCS. But we were not allowed to start school; we were

kept sitting around waiting for at least three months, and we could get no answers

to our questions about the delay. …Joe Louis was transferred to Fort Riley, and

when we told him about the delay, he immediately contacted some powerful

people in government. The Fort Riley command began to get some heat from

Washington and we suddenly found ourselves being welcomed into OCS.

– Jack Roosevelt Robinson, I Never Had It Made, 1972 ”

Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson sign baseballs

for a serviceman at a USO dance in San

Francisco, March 1943.

Courtesy of the Robinson Family Collection

4 Jack Roosevelt Robinson: Patriot