101 yr-old Capt. William A.
Cline was the Army’s defense attorney for Jackie Robinson in his court-martial
trial. Hamp & I visited with him at his home in Wharton, Texas
on January 14, 2012. The trial was in 1944 and according to Mr. Cline “there
was nothing said about it until the Turner Broadcasting people made the movie,
and that broke it loose. I was interviewed by newspapers all over the country”.
He proudly told me his narrative was also taken by a fellow named Anders who
called him from the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
I asked Mr. Cline if he’d
ever thought about how Major League Baseball would have progressed as far as
black players being part of the league if JR had been found guilty and had not
broken the color barrier when he did. He said yes, he sure had. When I asked
what kind of punishment JR could have received if Cline hadn’t gotten the
acquittal, he said with a high, emotionally charged voice, “Behavior unbecoming
to an officer and a gentleman could be punishable by death”.
And then he just started to
tell his stories. The following is a transcript of Mr. Cline telling us about
how he came to represent Jackie Robinson, followed by his opinion on what the
outcome of the trial was attributed to.
“Strangest thing how that
came about... I wasn’t trained as a staff judge advocate lawyer. I was
commissioned as a second lieutenant in the field of artillery. I was assigned
as the platoon commander for a sight destroyer battalion stationed up in Brownwood, Tx.
I served up there - we were scheduled to go to North
Africa. While we were there preparing to go over seas the fighting
had ended in North Africa so we were slated to go to Sicily
in Italy.
They converted my battalion to an amphibious tracker battalion which required
the best officer personnel.
They were graduating those
lawyers from Ann Arbor, Michigan, law school. They were sending them
down there, but they weren’t there very long – they were sending them all over
the world. And they just weren’t there
long enough to tend to business.
They put me, and another
fellow from the sight destroyers, - assigned us to the 4th Army
Headquarters there at Camp
Hood. I was a fervent
defense lawyer for the courts there.
Well, when the Jackie
Robinson incident occurred, and he was put under arrest, they created a court -
they didn’t put the officers in the stockade. They confined them to quarters.
Well, they cut orders directing me to be the defense attorney for Jackie
Robinson. Well I did a little investigation and at that time he was well known as
an All-American football player. I went over to his quarters to visit with him
about it – we had a lengthy visit. And he thanked me, told me that he felt that
the NAACP was going to furnish him with a lawyer. And I told him that, well,
(Cline smiles while remembering the exchange) I thought that was a pretty good
idea because, you know, I came from just about as far South as you could get!
Anyway, he talked about his
life. He frequently made reference to his mother, but never to his father. He
told me how his mother had moved them from Hillsboro,
Alabama – I thought he meant Texas
at first when he said it [this humored Cline to tell] – to Riverside, California.
She took the family out there and educated them in southern California.
It just so happened that one
of my friends had quarters up there on post and he’d gone on leave. And I’d had
my son, my oldest boy, up there visitin’ with me, and his mother. I took him
over there – he was a big football fan – and introduced him to Jackie. They had
a nice visit. And I went on back to my office thinking well, maybe it was all
over. 2 or 3 days later he called me, said he wanted me to represent him. Well
time was runnin’ out. I had to get pretty busy – they didn’t wait on you
then. They set the court and you got to
go.
It all came about when
Jackie got on a bus at Camp
Hood and sat down in the
middle of the bus. The bus driver stopped the bus and went back there and said
“so & so, you need to move to the back of the bus”. Jackie said “you go
drive the bus, I’ll sit where I want to sit”. The bus driver did drive it. He
drove it over to the MP station. The MP sargeant there put Jackie under arrest
for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. Well, while they were there
the MP sergeant had made reference several times to “nigger lieutenant”.
Finally Jackie told him “if you call me
a nigger lieutenant one more time or make reference to me as nigger lieutenant
I’m gonna break your back”.
With that the MP took him
over to the Provost Marshal – I don’t think the Provost Marshal really knew
what to do. But anyway, he aggravated Jackie a little while and told him “you
sit on that bench over there”. And the provost marshal went over to the mess
hall which was next door and sat there about 25-30 minutes. Well after that
length of time Jackie got kind of irritated and he went outside where there was
a walkway with pebble stones. He picked up a handful of that stuff and started
throwing it up on the roof of the mess hall, which was tin. That brought the
provost marshal out in a rage. He filed every kind of complaint you can
imagine.”
Well the battalion
commander who was a bird colonel felt like there wasn’t any basis to the
charge. On the trial of the case he testified in behalf of Jackie. It had a big
effect on the court’s acquittal of Jackie.
But it was real funny, that
all during the trial, every time we’d get a break or something, Jackie’d run back to the
telephone and I guess he’d call Rachel, or his mother, I don’t know who he was
calling, but he’d go call em on the
telephone. and when it was over he was very appreciative and thanked me. But I
never had any contact with him after that.
You know, there was one
factor I felt that was in my favor considerably. That is that the provost
marshal was in the housekeeping department. He obviously was what we called a
reclassified officer. The court was made of combat officers. And I just felt
like the court didn’t have any good connection with the housekeeping people.
And the bird colonel’s testimony was extremely strong in favor of Jackie. He
was a fine man. His battalion had already gone to the European theatre but they
held him over for that trial. He didn’t go til after the trial was over.”
That’s it for now. Check in
for more…lots of good stuff left that Mr. Cline talked about. Still planning on
getting video converted to post.
