An article on the Defense Department website devoted to Jackie Robinson’s military career disappeared and then reappeared, joining a series of government web pages on Black figures that have vanished under the Trump administration’s efforts to purge government websites of references to diversity and inclusion.
The brief biography describes Robinson’s childhood in California, his time in a segregated Army unit during World War II and his role in breaking baseball’s color barrier.
But for much of Wednesday, the Pentagon website displayed a “Page Not Found” message in place of the article. When the biography reappeared Wednesday afternoon, there were no notable changes.
The discovery that the page had vanished generated significant backlash on Wednesday. “You can’t make this up!” Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, wrote on social media.
Representative Yvette Clarke, a New York Democrat who represents the section of Brooklyn where Robinson once played, accused the Trump administration of erasing Black history, and said she would not forget the page’s disappearance.
“It’s painful,” Ms. Clarke said in an interview. But, she added: “History is history. At the end of the day, they’re only fooling themselves. The history is written in terms of the contributions that African Americans have made to the development of our country.”